


Valse Triste

by FloraOne



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: But can be read independently, F/M, Secret Relationship, Silver Millennium Era, So yeah this is a retelling of SilMil in Endymion's POV and so of COURSE everyone dies, it's also set in my harmless universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:01:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24665050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloraOne/pseuds/FloraOne
Summary: Endymion knew this was all a giant, dangerous mistake. He knew what was coming for them. But resisting was a skill he wouldn't learn for another lifetime.A secret relationship silver millennium fic and tragedy in three parts, set in the same narrative universe as "Harmless" and "Catalyst".
Relationships: Prince Endymion/Princess Serenity
Comments: 23
Kudos: 62





	1. Part I: The Middle

**Author's Note:**

> So, full disclosure, this fic was supposed to be a Lemon Tree set in my Silver Millennium universe. But then it grew and grew and grew and now it has three parts. It's still set in my personal silmil universe (since I strive to have every silmil I write to fit in the same universe) but it now moved past what I had originally intended.
> 
> However, this can be read independently, it stands alone, but if you want more stories in the same world, see the bottom ANs!
> 
> So yeah I struggled with this a little, and with writing in this "new normal" that is the summer of 2020 in general, but I hope you'll enjoy it. But be warned, we're back on the angstbus!
> 
> Anyway! More lengthy notes at the end of this chapter, but I'll let you read, first!

Valse Triste  
A Tragedy in Three Parts

Part I: The Middle

* * *

In the presence of the Crown Prince, one stood ramrod-straight.

One was vigilant and respectful, guarding and on guard.

Amynaeschylos took pride in his duty. What could be more honorable than protecting the holy mortal vessel of the divine spark? Day and day and day again?

He'd been trained all his life for just this task. Protecting the Royal Prince, and through Him the Divine Magic, from anything and everything, including, if need be, from Himself. Taken from the bed of his family at a young age for the honor to live on the castle grounds instead, to be welded and crafted into precision and holy duty because of his skill and precise, unwavering attention and perception. His family was proud.

He hadn't anticipated though that most of his tasks would be quite so… mundane.

He stood ramrod straight and in respectful vigil as Prince Endymion, the holy vessel of Earth's Golden Magic, took a lengthy piss in the bushes by the northern roads.

This wasn't quite what he had envisioned in his years of training.

Between the rustle of the oak tree leaves moving in the breeze, Amynaeschylos fought a blush as he so clearly heard the tinkle of … of…

He focused as hard as he could on the light-play that the midday sun rays orchestrated on the ground as they fought their way through the lush and heavy branches of the tree in bright orange and yellows, in order to keep out the awkward feeling of improper intrusion on a private and quite shameful moment, and kept standing straight.

They were four fifths of the way between the city and the groves and orchards that made up the lush greenery surrounding the remote Northern Temples that were this week's destination for His scheduled prayers.

The Prince made a relieved noise behind the lilac bushes, and Amynaeschylos lost the battle against his blush.

Losing an internal battle of will, he lost his forward focus and let it travel sideways, just for a moment. The guard to the right of him at least seemed as uncomfortable as he did.

At least the blooming foliage kept away any kinds of smells.

Debates and services and banquets and highly official meetings of utmost confidential nature. Briefings by scholars and jurists and nobles alike. Playing his humble role in the efforts towards the restoration of the Terran standing in the solar system by assisting and protecting the most important figure in that fight. Those were the things he had expected his daily routine to be.

He hadn't quite pictured standing straight in quite so many halls, in front of quite so many bathhouses, hearing His Divineness do quite so very many … human activities.

His Grace commander Jadeite clicked his tongue in what seemed to be annoyance, and stalked along the gravel in an annoyed huff, shielding his eyes to watch along the deserted, unfortified state road.

There was no one here, either way. A handful of guards in full golden battle armor, a commanding Shitennou, and their horses. Watching over the pissing heir of Earth's holy magic in the middle of nowhere.

Amynaeschylos bit back a sigh.

He'd come into his duties just before the Prince had stepped into the role of debutante. If he behaved honorably, one day very soon, he might be part of the King's Guard, instead of doing things like… this.

Nonetheless. One was prudent and careful. He was the defender of the realm, the defender of the magic of Earth. Even in the middle of nowhere.

"Was that really necessary?" His Grace commander Jadeite said in a tone of such informal, passive accusation that always shocked Amynaeschylos to the core, once the Prince walked back out from His temporary hide-out, fixing His extraordinary gold-embroidered summer tunic underneath the plated armor.

"Yup," His Holiness replied, not even looking back, then seemed to interpret the standing of the sun in the sky, and frowned.

"You couldn't have waited until we arrived back in civilization, really?" His Grace commander Jadeite said as His Holiness went on to study the golden pocket watch attached to his attire - something which He seemed to carry with Him at all times, these days.

One of the commander's hands stemmed against the heavy plating attached to his hip in impatience. He'd said it in a way and without the proper titles that any civilian might have bled for.

But he was absolutely, and fully ignored.

"How about we walk the rest of the way?" His Holiness said at last, pocketing the star-shaped accessory, and lifted one arm, shielding His gaze to the skies once more.

His Grace commander Jadeite groaned in a way that made Amynaeschylos most uncomfortable - even if it reflected what most of the guard would probably share in sentiment. It was a hot day in what was to become a hot summer, and the remaining road would take long on foot.

However, the word of His Holiness was law, and so, of course, they walked.

At least the meadows leading up to the small, holy temple town were quite pleasant. Fields of hollyhocks, corncockle and tansy dotting the tall green grassland in vibrant spots of color on both sides of the lone road as far as the eye could see, tall trees and flowering bushes providing shade ever so often.

It turns out, the sound of the most Holy Person's urination was not the most shocking thing Amynaeschylos was to encounter that day, however.

It was when they had finally arrived about two long hours later at the gates of the picturesque temple town, the pillars of the Great Structure rising in view just behind the supple apple orchards, that they stumbled upon a lone woman on the road.

That, alone, of course, was not the shocking part of it. Even when, as was the custom, the temple villages ought to be vacated safe for the highest of the priests when the Crown Prince was to arrive, but oblivious, travelling civilians being refused entry on these occasions were more the norm than the exception, after all.

No, the shock only came when he was the one to venture closer.

The group had halted, the whinnies of their horses an instant soundtrack to the commotion. The Crown Prince had protested as His Grace commander Jadeite held him back with a pointed glare and instructed Amynaeschylos to investigate.

And that he did, head held high like his higher standing allowed, the golden plating of his armor clanking as he walked.

"Halt, miss!" Amynaeschylos called as he approached. She looked young. Powdered complexion, lightest hair piled atop her head in a messy kind of thick braid that disappeared into a cream-colored hooded summer cape that fluttered in the light breeze. "The temples are not open to the public on this day, I'm afraid."

"Oh," she jumped, as if caught, her cheeks flushing. She was quite pretty.

He straightened a little, held his chin high, and frowned.

A civilian was supposed to bow her head in the presence of the Royal Guard. She didn't.

Maybe she didn't recognize the armor?

"I'm afraid you'll have to turn around, miss," he continued.

Her eyes flickered behind him, and Amynaeschylos, without so much as looking back, stepped calmly into her line of sight, blocking the view of His Holiness in a trained movement that was, by now, almost automatic.

The heavy clank of armor behind him, he knew another of the guards had placed himself just behind him to the side, blocking the woman's view further.

She frowned at him the second he did, lowered her hood, did not avert her eyes as would be her place to do, and he frowned right back.

Did she not see the royal sigil? Was this woman stupid?

"Miss," he tried again, and almost jolted when she went on to interrupt him—

"I seem to have lost my way," she said, a thick accent even in her first word, and he frowned even harder. "And I've had long way," she continued.

He blinked in utter surprise. This had never happened. Of course, sometimes civilian women would glimpse His Holiness, but once they noticed who it was, their eyes would widen. Some would giggle, others would bow and apologize and make way, none would ever talk back—

Had he heard that accent anywhere before?

"Surely—" she went right on, her accent so thick she was barely understandable, and reached to unclasp the surprisingly intricate clasp of her elegant cape. Maybe she was a foreign noble? But where was her entourage, if so?

Behind him, armor clattered, hoves trampled, and he felt a presence approach.

"—you would no refuse woman a rest who thirst—"

He recoiled. This woman barely spoke the common tongue. What was she doing here alone?

"—to drink from the water on a day is hot?"

And then Amynaeschylos choked on his saliva, and someone behind him groaned in frustration, because the woman had shrugged off her cape to one side, and she was wearing a dress made of nothing.

It was as if she was wearing someone's thin wedding veil dotted with some flowers. It was the most shocking dress he'd ever seen. Her silhouette was clearly visible. Her skin shone through every— was that— oh, gods—

Amynaeschylos panicked. He had to do something. His Holiness was right there and just had to crane His head to see and—

Oh gods. Oh, holy magic.

The Holy Prince was untouched and innocent. He was pure and untainted. His virgin eyes naïve and unknowing, as was the law. His eyes were not accustomed to such frivolity. It was his duty to protect Him from—

Amynaeschylos flew at her, and her eyes widened. He needed to get at that cape, needed to wrap it back around her so He would not—

Someone grabbed his arm before he could touch her, and when he saw who it was, he almost screamed.

"Who would one be to call oneself the protector of men, if one denied a thirsty woman water?" His Holiness said kindly, easily, calmly, smallest of smiles gracing His graceful lips, and Amynaeschylos could not refrain the chortled noise wheezing from his throat.

She didn't even bow.

He needed to jump between them. Needed to shield His Holiness's impressionable eyes. It was his duty to—

But His Holiness's hand was on his arm holding him back and what could he— how did one— what was he supposed to—

His Holiness's eyes did not stray. Instead they bore into the woman's as if she wore any normal sort of attire, and Amynaeschylos let out a sigh. Maybe He did not notice. Maybe His magic acted as a shield against indecency.

The Crown Prince Endymion reached out Himself to slip the cape back around the woman's shoulders, and she did not faint in shock, and Amynaeschylos almost had a heart attack.

Behind them, His Grace commander Jadeite finally approached, cursing and growling, but before he reached them, before he stepped in, His Holiness had thrust the reins of the Royal Steed into Amynaeschylos's shocked hands, had moved to her, quick and decisive and Amynaeschylos was starting to hyperventilate.

Because the Crown Prince of Elysion held out his hand for this most improperly dressed foreign woman and she took it, right under his watch, right in front of the holy gates where she was not supposed to be. And all the while there he was, letting it happen, watching dumbfounded and shocked and frozen, holding the reins of the prized white horse he wasn't even supposed to touch.

"Absolutely not!" His Grace commander Jadeite howled authoritatively, and he had never seen His Holiness's gaze so full of anger as Amynaeschylos finally unfroze.

Moving armor clanking, the woman was grabbed by the arm as the rest of the guard started to act appropriately.

Taken from His Holiness's very furious side (He was too kind! He would have to learn!), it wasn't long before the gates closed behind her with a loud thud.

From inside the village walls, priests started to flutter in and apologize most profusely. Finally, people were bowing again. And even if His mood never picked up again, His Holiness was shown around the gardens and introduced to the temple wardens.

And were it not for His Grace commander Jadeite's hushed reprimands through clenched teeth at His Holiness's side, it was as if the incident had never happened.

It was only as he finally stood guard in front of the tall golden doors of the prayer room, having secured the room before he closed and locked the doors on His Holiness's solitude to stand vigil over this holy hour, that Amynaeschylos's heart finally calmed down, even when the guilt weighed strong.

All manner of things could have happened. The vixen energy of this woman could have defiled the innocent Prince right from under his protection, and he had been too shocked to act! It was his duty to protect the holy vessel from dishonor!

He inhaled deeply, exhaled deeply, straightened himself up and in an effort to calm, sharpened his senses out towards the emptiness of the halls, on his one appointed side of the double doors.

His Holiness would not be seduced under his watch, and so he stood straight with renewed conviction.

In the presence of the Crown Prince, one was vigilant and respectful, guarding and on guard.

He and three more men framed the golden wing doors, one next to him, two on the other side. The remaining six guarded every door that led in and out of the temple, mute and silent, His Grace commander Jadeite right in front of the holy grounds.

As he stood there, waiting in yet another empty hallway, ramrod straight and silent, Amynaeschylos's mind kept whirring.

Where had he heard that accent before?

* * *

Up close, the cream-white fabric of her dress was even more translucent, netted and woven together as if by magic's hand, slipping from his fingers softer than silk and thinner than a butterfly's wings. Organza? Dotted tulle? Probably not. This was so much softer, so much thinner, so much more delicate than he'd ever seen, and yet somehow it felt more robust than any fabric he'd ever had the privilege to touch. (Just like her.)

A veil so exquisite and pliable it was meant to sheath around a goddess, and it did. Stemmed leaves and flower petals and berries and foliage around her midriff and falling modestly scattered down its length - the rich embroidery in greens and burgundies and magentas in the shapes of the most beautiful, rich flora amidst tiny emerald appliqué. She looked like a summer fairy. Like something from a summer's tale. A dress made for a queen.

A dress that felt even softer, even richer, as it was scooped up by his greedy hands, hiked up over his elbows as he pushed her against the marble temple walls in the small prayer room, and dipped his tongue into the sturdy bodice, traced the hem of it against the soft, too confined swells of her breasts.

She sighed in that exquisite way she always did, the way he dreamed of in all those numerous, painfully lonely nights without her, her hands moving rapidly against his chest - but he was too occupied with pressing his tongue down her cleavage to register exactly what she was doing until the plated armor around his waist clattered noisily to the temple floor.

Neither of them even flinched at the noise, too used with getting away with these things. No one would dare come in and interrupt the private prayers of the future King of Earth in a place as holy as this. A place he so thoroughly planned to defile.

"That dress is your worst disguise by far," Endymion groaned not unappreciatively into her chest, his accents curling around her language, his mouth pressed against the valley between her breasts and his hands digging into her soft, soft, soft behind, so beautifully bare, as he balanced her against the marble, and her hands brushed and brushed and brushed so very impatiently against the laces of his pants, unlacing the soft, long leather strips so fast they cracked between them with the sounds of tiny whips. "Whatever were you thinking?"

Her fingers stilled just barely at his words, and he grunted in protest yet pushed his tongue into the part in her dress between her breasts undeterred.

"What?" she protested, voice breathy and thick with lust, and yet in that petulant kind of retort he so loved her for. "But it's amazing! It's so earth-like! I blend right in!"

He snorted, grabbed a fistful of the fabric around her bottom, and inhaled her scent in reference.

"I've had it made!" she protested, distracted, and yet ground back against him. He hissed the air in through his teeth when she pressed herself against his cock.

She was so warm and wet and soft even through the fabric of his pants, and he knew it would stain. He wanted it to stain.

"Specifically in Terran fashion!" she continued as if he could still follow, as if his mind wasn't entirely too preoccupied to remember what they were talking about.

Right. This ridiculously, deliciously immodest dress that kept him so infuriatingly from wrapping his teeth around the most perfect nipple ever formed.

"Has the person who made this ever been to Earth, then?" he moaned into her skin, muffled and in a low sort of growl, and he dragged the flat of his tongue from the valley of her breast up to the dip of her collarbone.

She moaned as his teeth and lips dragged up her throat. Oh, how he would love to leave marks. How he would die to mark her as his.

"It has flowers!" she sighed weakly, and threw her head back.

He dug the fingers of his left hand harder into her plump, perfect ass, shifted her as to balance her against him more and groaned open-mouthed against her jugular when it shifted her across his cock, so he could free his right hand and move it between her legs and into the soft, soft curls and down her wet, wet lips.

She gasped a soft, broken 'ah' and threw her head back again, and his lips dragged from her neck to her cheekbone with the movement.

"It's see-through," he said matter-of-factly, and her eyes fluttered open to glare at him.

"It's hot outside!" she defended hotly, and he grinned, and moved his hand.

"Besides, i-it's so—" she started, and then squeaked so very very beautifully, because he'd started softly orbiting that very, very swollen nub. "It's s-so," she tried again, gasped, and he smirked against her face. "So modest. Everyone would s-ay so."

He snorted, threw her a look, but she had her eyes closed, scrunched up in desire, her cheeks flushed as rosy as her chest, her breathing hard. He loved the sight. He loved it so, so much. His cock jumped violently against her in his half-undone pants, her fingers curled into his tunic, twitching spasmodically as he dragged his middle finger down her slit and rubbed around and around the entrance of her, thumb orbiting her clit.

By the time he was allowing his finger to press just a little more, dip just a bit into her, she was writhing. Moaning too loud and moving her hips erratically.

"I'll buy you a whole wardrobe full," he vowed against her parted lips, hushed and hoarse, enthralled and staring at her face as she came so beautifully apart from his touch. He didn't want to move a second.

He pressed his thumb down against her clit, just once. Went back to orbiting, and she cried out.

"You c-can't," she gasped between clenched teeth. As always, she tried so hard to be silent. But these days, he wanted so much to hear her scream.

She was right, of course. He couldn't. Sneaking out for such a thing was impossible: he would be recognized. And even if he somehow managed to convince the court to allow him to march down into the city with his entourage of ever-present guards officially, what would the Crown Prince buy a shop full of dresses for? How would he explain it?

He frowned. Pressed the palm of his hand against her wet flesh a little firmer, and she gasped and writhed against him, seeking pleasure at his fingertips with all the indulgent, unashamed, unapologetic hedonism he so admired her for.

Still frowning, almost annoyed, he moved his other hand and continued where she'd left off, ripping at the lacing of his pants.

"I'll steal you something from the treasury, then." he growled, pushed his finger into her. "You can wear that instead."

She keened, open-mouthed, tilted her face with only half open lids to regard him, her face contorted in pleasure and yet answering him.

His fingers slid from her wet and noisily.

She held his gaze, suddenly serious.

"And be accused of robbing the Terran Queen of her so wildly recognisable inheritance? These garments are in paintings," she said quietly, and he frowned harder.

Of course she was right. He didn't want her to be right. If it were up to him, every single dress in that treasury, every last of his mother's garments, would belong to her.

Only ever her.

But of course that was not to be the case. Of course, he was to marry. Soon. These dresses would belong to someone else.

And judging from the way her mouth closed and tilted, from the way she cast her eyes down and breathed slower, sighed harder, she was now thinking the same, and he hated himself for ever bringing it up.

He clenched his jaw and dropped his hands and ripped at the last laces that held his pants up.

They slipped down his hips noisily just as he dug his fingers into her thighs and spread her wide open, and her eyes fluttered back to his.

"I'll get you others," he promised. And with a powerful push she gasped and arched her neck and was moved up the marble wall, that beautiful dress shifting softly against the cold stone as he entered her. "More beautiful than any Terran dress you'll have ever seen. More beautiful than anything in the treasury. You'll have them all," he growled, intense, her inner muscles fluttering around him, hugging him and stretching around him so deliciously as he stayed and pressed against her like she liked, filling her completely.

He dropped his forehead against hers, felt the almost painful tingle on his skin. The hot glimmer of her crescent moon insignia as it fought so rigorously against the creams and powders that disguised it, and welcomed it with a relieved sigh. Felt her breath on his lips and her soft, slick heat hugging his pulsing, still cock.

He stayed and pressed until she moved, until she keened, until she fluttered and jerked impatiently and rolled her hips and wanted him to move.

Only then did he roll his hips back, twitching and ready to explode into her, as if that would do anything, as if the Silver Crystal would allow it to do anything. And maybe, maybe, maybe, one day, the very power that created her, shone through her, gave her that so universally coveted and envied power that enslaved her much like him… maybe one day the Silver Crystal would not see him as anything she would need to be protected from.

Maybe.

She mewled as he so slowly slipped from her, and then pushed into her again, much faster. Wet and warm and noisy - that most erotic of all the sounds that he only ever wanted to hear with her - and pushed back into her again, gripping at her harder. And again.

She gripped right back. Firm and insistent, the sharp bite of her fingernails leaving the most wanted, most painful, most fitting crescent moons where they dug too hard into his biceps as he fucked her noisily against the wall. Fucked her in the temple where he was supposed to pray for his kingdom's independence of the Lunar Oppression, and he wanted them to never fade. Wanted them to mark him permanently, just like her.

* * *

"You weren't in the meadow," he'd said later, when they'd calmed down and he'd straightened that mesmerizing dress, and he lifted her by the hips to help her over the low fence, helped her sneak back out the of the temple and out the village walls, and he couldn't keep the petulance of someone unused to waiting out of his voice.

"I took every break I could get away with," he tacked on. "Stretched the journey out as far as I could."

She stopped with her delicate hands on the masonry, that ridiculously beautiful see-through dress riding up a little as she straddled it.

"I know," she said with a compassionate flinch. "I'm sorry."

He nodded, hopped on after her.

"I couldn't sneak away fast enough," she said, twisting to look behind her, searching his gaze, and he nodded again, grunting.

She pouted, and jumped.

His heart jumped as she did and he lost his balance as he reached for her needlessly. Irrationally protective, he almost fell off the wall himself in his effort to make sure she wouldn't.

"I made it here instead, didn't I?" she said softly as he stumbled to the ground.

And it had been so, so very risky.

He ought to reprimand her. Ought to tell her to never attempt such a dangerous rendezvous again. That she should have stayed back when it became too dangerous, when she was seen.

He held his tongue.

"I'm sorry if I made Jadeite even angrier," she said, looking out across the blooming grassland, sighing both in regret and wistfulness.

He shrugged. He didn't care.

She looked like a goddess. Hair mussed from his hands, glowing skin and sex-flushed bosom, that pale dress with its embroidered foliage dancing in the summer breeze, and he felt his heart clench.

He realised now what was so mesmerizing to him about her in that dress. In the way it tried to pass as Terran but so absolutely didn't. That translucent dress as light and thin as dresses would be on the Moon, so light he knew it fluttered and floated in the Moon's so much lighter gravity, weighted down by the colors of nature so very apparent around them just where she stood now in the meadow.

It was a marriage of their kingdoms in fabric form. The colorful embellishment on colorless, softest, ethereal fabric. This dress was them.

He walked to her in two long strides, caught her cheek and trapped her wistful gaze to force her eyes to his instead, his thumb stroking gently down the apple of her cheek.

Her eyes fluttered up to his. Her smile looked too sad. It always looked too sad these days. Like she was no longer able to forget their absence, their distance, even while they were together.

"I thought I wouldn't see you," he croaked down at her.

And he supposed he didn't look much better. He definitely sounded like it.

She curled her hands into the fabric of his tunic, right above his heart, and looked ready to cry. "I'm here now," she whispered.

But of course, it was about to be a lie.

He watched her disappear, the glow of her, the way her eyelashes hugged the high bones of her cheeks as she closed her eyes, the shine of the crescent moon breaking the powders like glass from her forehand as she used the power that took her home.

Watched the drop of rock and soil around the small, destroyed crater it left in the once unblemished grass and flowerbeds when she disappeared in a shimmer of silver magic, and his heart felt a little like the broken ground.

* * *


	2. Part II: The Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I conceptualized and wrote this fic to the most tragic song I know: Valse triste by Jean Sibelius, an orchestral piece (originally written for a play with a title that translates to "death") which accompanies, quote, "a sequence in which a woman rises from her deathbed to dance with ghosts." It's an AMAZING song dripping with tristesse to boot as well as little pockets of joy interspersed, and to me, it fits the tragedy of the silver millennium exactly.
> 
> My favorite orchestral rendition of it is a version performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. (Which, as the most trivia savvy of you know, is an Easter Egg in the Sailor Moon world as it is!) You can find it both on YouTube and Spotify if you wanna have a soundtrack to this fic!
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like this, those of you who have read my short story "Harmless" (in the little moments series) will recognize a few bits here, more notes at the bottom, and also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHOCOCAT!

* * *

Part II: The Beginning

* * *

It should have never started. It was an accident. And it was entirely their fault.

He'd been dreading that day for months. _Years_. The day it would all start, the day he'd lose all remaining freedom and become a symbol instead. And so he'd begged his shitennou to help him sneak out on the eve of his 19th birthday for one last glimpse of what life might have been like had he not been born into his lonely rank, and it had felt like a lifeline.

He'd sought a pretence of freedom like that a handful of times in his youth. When he'd first started to notice all the rules put in place specifically for him and his only means of rebellion was to run, just a bit, just so much. Escape his very solitary confinement, and pretend he was no one of importance.

The first time no one had known where he went. The second time he'd learned better than to risk the heads of the men who were sworn to his protection and had begged. For years he had always been confused as to why Kunzite had allowed it as long as one of his Shitennou was there in disguise. And had looked the other way in stern but silent anger when Endymion had mastered the art of sneaking out from under their eyes anyway, but never breathed a word. Years later Endymion knew it probably was because Kunzite was well aware of the fact that it had an expiration date. He knew soon Endymion would not be able to blend in anymore with just a change of attire.

And the expiration date was upon him, waiting for him like a henchman in the morning. The beginning of his 20th year. His royal debut. His official societal introduction. The day the court started looking for a wife for him. The day the coins were to start wearing his image, the stamps his sigil. The beginning of his long-winded inauguration until, 3 years later at the Lucky Age of 22, he would take his late father's throne and replace his mother the queen regent, and be married off and break his holy vow of celibacy in a very public ceremony soon after.

Would he have thought differently about all this had he known the day would never come? That he would be dead before he took the throne? That the life he had dreaded for so long was never to come true?

It was supposed to be one last night of pretend. One last night of blending in and being jostled and chatted to in earnest and in bored disinterest. One last night of drinking cheap wine from vendor's cups another's lips had brushed, from dancing among people unafraid to bump into him. One last night of blessed invisibility before all eyes would never leave him again. One last night of pretend before his prison, before a boring ceremony, before being formally introduced to the heiress of the moon and the royalty of the stars that would mark the beginning of his own role in a long history of Earth's antagonism with its guardian.

And then he'd met her earlier than he would have thought but didn't know it.

He could have prevented it all had he known. The heiress of the moon. The looming, feared, judged phantom of his future. A sovereign in waiting just like him. A girl his age, and yet, he was sure to die before her reign would ever begin: She would reign on for a thousand years while he would just be a blip in her history, dying a mortal's death even when he carried the crystal that gave life. And so it was supposed to be. So it would have been without that night.

A night meant to be utterly harmless. And yet it was the night the world was doomed. The night he fell. The night he was first kissed by lips he would kiss until he died so much sooner than he'd anticipated.

The night he met _her_.

It had been the first night he'd finally understood the threat he'd been so protected from all his life. He'd always scoffed at the worry of his elders, the stories of days gone past and the kingdom at war for generations. Just because a sovereign couldn't keep it in their pants, and the wars and battles fought over the holy lineage of Earth's golden magic led boys and men alike to their deaths until none were left and the women picked up the swords only to be struck down too, resulting in the loss of millions and the rules of celibacy that had been drilled into him even before he ever knew what he might ever do with that appendage but take a leak.

And suddenly, even when it had been just a night, even when he knew every thought was treason, he spent that dreaded night awake with not a thought spared to the ceremony waiting for him, and instead clinging to the phantom feelings of those soft, saccharine eyes so full of childlike joy of a kind he'd never seen. Those unforgettable eyes laughing in such careless abandon as she danced and jumped and hopped with him around the bonfires as if the very movement held all happiness in this life. The way she drank the honey wines so readily directly from his cup, her gaze so sparkling and untouched by burden, unimpressed by him and equal, and that soft, precious voice calling him 'Dimi' in a way that felt like she didn't want him to go, like a siren leading him to temptation.

And those strange, foreign lips pressed to his and the 'what if' that started its whisper in his heart.

What if he was plebeian like her? What if he could sneak out for good, right now, find her and bed her and never return? What if he could deepen that kiss and marry her and run, run, run where no one would ever find them?

What if he could have her anyway? What if he could find her, discreetly? What if he could make her a maid on the castle grounds? What if she already was and he had never seen her? What if he could have her and keep her and make her his secret and no one would know.

Treason. All of them. Horrible. Immoral. Abhorrent. Inhumane. Laced with the entitlement of his rank, and he despised himself for all of them, every single thought, and yet there they were, keeping him awake that night with desire and yearning for something he could never have. That very night he was to be introduced into a society that would be his prison for the rest of his life.

He'd never be as shocked, never feel as betrayed, as that day in the Grand Hall. As he, for the second time in his life, laid eyes on her. The day he found out his kiss had been stolen by none other than Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom, Heiress of the Silver Millennium.

And yet, he wanted nothing more than to crush his lips back on hers again.

And he did. Eventually. And again and again and again.

It was a special kind of irony, a special kind of punishment destiny held for him, that he who was not allowed to want for such a thing at all, would want so badly none other but the most forbidden person in the universe to him.

* * *

The night he lost his heart to her for good in addition to his long established want, sold it to her soul forevermore with no way to ever even _want_ to get it back, was a secret and a mistake like all of them.

She'd snuck down to Earth so often after that fateful eve of his royal debut when this all began. When they'd still pretended this was still something they had control over. When they still pretended it held no weight at all.

If they didn't speak it into existence, it must not mean anything. If they didn't say it, they were still safe.

That night, he'd found her in the gardens. He hadn't said anything as he stopped just that step behind her that the Sovereign of Earth was to stand behind the Empress of the Silver Millennium. Even when neither of them yet held those titles themselves.

Just the crunch of his boots in the soil and the crickets in the night. Just her soft breathing as she gazed up at his very own statue, fireflies dancing around it in a way that made him feel embarrassed.

It was marble and gold, aureate and plated and life-size, his chin high and his pose an act of pomp, a pond filled with sacred water lotus right behind it in the tall grass, falling off the statue from the marble likeness of his cape that was dotted with climbing oleander, situated where the light of the moon would hit it exactly at the stroke of midnight as it wandered across the sky in the palace's shadow.

He hated it.

And, suddenly so very nervous, he'd never hated it more than in that moment, so hyper-aware of every movement of hers. And yet, she stood and studied his likeness with that small frown between her brows. As if she was studying him. Judging him silently.

It was when he couldn't take it anymore, when he exhaled to excuse its very ridiculous existence, that she reached out and tenderly stroked his marble cheek.

She'd never even looked back. Never acknowledged his presence, and yet it was unmistaken she knew it was him behind her.

"You look as caged as I do," she whispered in that lilting voice and language that still shook him so much, whispered it right to his stone lips, her thumb trailing gentle lines beneath his eyes as if to stroke away invisible tears, then up to his brow as if to do the same for his anger, and he felt it like a punch to his gut.

"Pressed into stone like this," she mumbled up at him and yet not, and she frowned. She frowned so very much.

No, there was no judgement at all in this woman. None at all.

He stood there. Mute as she stroked her knuckles down his jaw, ran the pad of a pale, slender finger across his stone lips.

It was then that the moonlight at last peaked out from the clouds over the looming palace walls and hit his likeness, and with it, her, too. And it was the first time he saw that the legends were true: The ethereal, otherworldly shine of a Lunar royal in the direct moonlight all those songs had serenaded, all those men had feared.

"Maybe even more…"

He didn't know what to say.

But he did flood with the sudden, impossibly overwhelming need to step forward and smash his statue, and replace the imposter with his real skin so he might feel her touch instead.

Instead, he cleared his throat.

"I'm lucky to be so blessed. It's a small price to pay," he brushed it off. Uncomfortably. Lying through his teeth because it was practiced, and he regretted it immediately, but didn't take it back.

It had been the night he realised what she had realised so much earlier than him. That there was no one in the world who would ever understand him as well as she would. That, about this, there could be no secrets between them. So very different from him in temperament and spirit, his opposite and his completion, yet locked into the same lonely prison only they would ever share.

She didn't whirl around as much as just tilt her head back and found his eyes, and yet her white, so scandalously translucent dress twirled around her form as if she'd danced.

Her eyes were disappointed, and so, so very sad, and this time he wanted to smash himself for eliciting that look, or maybe turn to stone himself.

"Yes," she said. "That's what I'm always meant to say, as well."

It wasn't a small price at all, of course. It was the _biggest_ price he could pay. And no one could relate better than she.

In the end, it didn't even have to be spoken out loud. It meant everything even without words. There was nowhere to be safe.

He'd never told her that this night was the night he drowned and fell and fell and never hit a bottom, and handed his heart over in helpless surrender. The night he had given his heart to her so fully it was never to return to him in any lifetime - that night against the statue of the Crown Prince of Elysion. Had never told her that her sad frown, the image of her between the fireflies, shining in the moonlight as she pressed grievous fingertips full of compassion for him to his marbled lips, and the way she had turned to him in profile with those mourning eyes for him, glittering in the moonlight, was burned into the very fabric of his dreams. Was the image he would conjure up for all those many, many nights spent yearning for those very, very few stolen moments that he could hope to hold her in secret. Was the image he would find echoed in his unconscious thousands of years later when he no longer knew this world ever even existed.

But when he pressed her against the statue minutes later, fingertips in her hair and sighs against her skin, when he pressed his lips to her face and mirrored what her fingers had done to his likeness, pressed them - clumsy and nervous-dry and too-focused and reverent - to the bone beneath her eye, to the stroke of her jaw, to the frown in her brow, and, most reverently, the crescent moon insignia that tingled so hot against his sensitive skin, pressed them _everywhere_ but against those forbidden lips he remembered the taste of so vividly, pressed and followed every tilt of her face, every flick of her eyes, mesmerized and enthralled, he thought she already knew.

When he came to, breathless and intoxicated and shocked and hard (he couldn't! Forbidden, forbidden, _forbidden_ ), she held her breath and held his gaze and it swam in such understanding he wanted nothing more but to drown.

Her hair flowed like silk in the soft breeze, and it cushioned her so well that it made no sound at all when she leaned her head back against his likeness, eyes on his so he would watch as she stretched her whole body against the front of his gold-and marble one, that soft behind so clearly silhouetted against that so infamously, scandalously see-through fabric that made up the most famous ceremonial dress in the known worlds, and he couldn't help the chortled whimper that died in his throat, because he'd never wanted so much.

Her hand reached out. Shining and small and so pale in the moonlight as if it was marble as well - the purest kind that so glittered in the light, crafted to perfection by someone blessed from the gods with skill or else they would not be able to create such perfection, the arch of her palm, the hollow of her wrist a testament to beauty itself, or maybe he'd just fallen too deep, too blinded, too consumed. That perfect hand reached out and electrified him as it curled into the thin tunic he wore, black and linen and informal and so thin, and it came free just a little when she tucked at it. He could feel it all, the thin barrier no match for every last of his heightened, wanting senses, the brush of her knuckles against his chest through the fabric, the way it travelled down every nerve ending and pooled in his cock.

She pulled at him and he came willingly. Fell back against her with a bite to his lip, trying so hard - _so hard_ \- to keep his hips tilted away from her, to keep his hips from sinning. But he was already sinning. He would never stop sinning, never again.

He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't.

But, _oh_. Oh, how did he _want_.

She knew. She _had_ to know.

These hands, these delicate, soft hands, like silk and a butterfly's touch, like the petals of the oleander climbing up the marble behind her, back on his untouched cheeks, her eyes boring into his as she shifted her head against that marble chest, and pulled his face closer to align it with hers, so close he felt her breath on his lips but not her touch.

He puckered them involuntarily. Hoping to breach the gap, unsuccessfully.

"Do you want to be a little freer?" her words hit his mouth, and she curled a sinful leg around his.

Yes. God, yes.

Sin. Shame. Not allowed, not allowed, not allowed.

His heart hammered. His wanting, wanting, wanting heart. And it hammered still when she held his gaze and lifted that gossamer fabric, the hem dirtied by bond and soil, and then it was him that pressed, unbidden, broken, hanging by a thread. Pressed his hips against her, what was so hard and so forbidden to be bulging against his breeches, hitting her where he was so most unwelcome if by everyone's decree but hers, and he'd never felt so unfree, never so confined and locked up and imprisoned as in this very moment when freedom felt like it was at his fingertips, waiting on her skin just outside his reach.

Because he couldn't. He couldn't, he couldn't.

He groaned, broken and pained and pulsing, and when she pulled at his face again, her lips finally fell against his trembling ones when she spoke once more.

"With me?"

It was so wrong. So treasonous. Those plump lips as they formed words against his shaking mouth, his every synapse wanting to explode, wanting to delve his tongue into her mouth and lower his breeches if only half-way and thrust into her right against the very symbol of his prison, but he couldn't and he would never, ever be allowed to do so with her.

She broke her hold of him, then. When he didn't answer for too long. Pushed him off her gently, and everything in him screamed in protest even when it was the right thing to do. (Was it?)

Reached up and rose to her tiptoes, that untamable dress shifting about her as she did so. And with lingering lips, and as if in apology, as if he'd rejected her (and how could he ever,? he didn't understand!), she kissed his cheek.

And then she let go.

Lowered herself back on her heels, her hem in the soil.

His heart punched a terrified tattoo into his chest.

It was months later that he would grasp what had happened here. How she'd mistaken his timid reaction as refusal, as rejection, as some act of reason he would never ever be capable of when it came to her, and had decided it best not to commit high treason with someone so unwilling. Except he'd never been unwilling. He'd just been a level of inexperienced and inhibited she'd never known to ever encounter. Had just been too obvious to ever see the existence of the silent question asked here.

_Do you want this, too?_

His silence had unwittingly answered for him.

He had only understood it so much later, when she didn't return to Earth any longer. When he found every reason to travel to the Moon himself, a place he'd never thought he might want to visit before in his life, both in official manner and disguise, and had no idea what she was talking about when she said he'd had it right, they shouldn't. That it was wrong.

But how could something so right ever be so wrong?

Because right there in front of his statue, she didn't know that he was too overwhelmed, too tempted, too lost in his warring mind, had no clue whatever had transpired here. That this, right here, would have been the end of it, had he not run after her with a terrified heart, weeks later.

And if not then, then perhaps it would have all ended if he'd listened to the firsts of her so numerous goodbyes, or if he'd listened to the silent messages that were the sending of her decoy, or if he hadn't, the next time it had actually been _her_ on his golden palace grounds, reacted by pure instinct and bodily shoved her back into the rose bushes perhaps a bit too hard, and pushed his tongue into her hot, forbidden mouth as if he owned it now. (He didn't, he never would.)

It would have ended, had he not forced it afterwards. Here, that night with the moon and the fireflies and his statue as caged and frozen as him, when she stepped back from him, it would have ended. When she left with that sad smile for him. Pushed him off of her with gentle authority, turning back to him just before the magic made her disappear from his planet altogether, left him gaping and confused and so painfully, wrongfully hard, and _no_ , why, what had he done wrong, why couldn't she keep touching him, keep doing this to him, _please_ —

Afterwards, he'd done everything to keep her. To make her return time and time again.

Yes. Afterwards, he'd had to fight to get her back. To even just get a glimpse of her. Afterwards, even when she so clearly did, he didn't fight it anymore. Nothing of it. Not a single thing about it.

* * *

"They're very protective of you," she'd remarked on the night of no return - months later, stolen kisses and dangerous trips to the moon and back later, when he _finally_ found her sneaking around the palace grounds again where neither of them was supposed to be - as she watched his Shitennou run around like startled chicken in the gardens with their oil lanterns in the dark, along with what seemed to be about two dozen guards. Searching for him.

She was half hanging out the window, hands braced wide on the sill, leaning over impossibly far, balancing on her tiptoes in order to watch, and it kind of freaked him out.

After having fought so hard to be near her, every nerve in his body was attuned to her.

He'd watched her - this woman his chest sang for so much, so frighteningly fast, and so secretly it hurt - trip and fall and stumble along her way on every single occasion that kismet had granted him to see her, and after his first, desperate trips to the Moon on official, phony matters and in secret despair for just a glimpse, he reckoned it was perhaps in part because of the immense change in gravity between the two. But that didn't put him at all at ease watching her dangle out from an oriel window in the highest palace floor as if she would merely softly float to the ground if she fell.

He stemmed his elbows into the window frame, and moved a little closer.

So he might catch her. That was all.

Below them, Kunzite bellowed something to the guards, but they were too far up to make out any words. He'd only been gone for a few minutes, had not even left the palace grounds, had simply not been found in his bedchambers when that was where he ought to be at this hour, and already there was such a commotion.

He hoped they were safe here, for a little while. The Shitennou knew him to sneak _out_ , not _in_. Although he hadn't been very careful to sneak away undetected tonight.

But she'd not exactly given him any advance warning that he might get to see her. And he would do _anything_ to not risk her leaving again.

It had still been such a fragile thing between them, up until this point in time. Terrifying, dangerous, unreasonable. Preventable. He'd felt he needed to choose his words well, so she would not prevent it.

"They're not protective of me," he finally said with a frown, watching Zoisite gesticulate wildly and inappropriately, talking back to Kunzite, no doubt.

Serenity's face turned, her chin so prettily in her hand and her shoulder sliding out towards the dark gardens even further. She threw him an amused, if doubtful, but very pointed look.

There was that little flush to her cheeks.

(It was his accent, he'd concluded some time ago. She seemed to like the way he spoke her language. He'd stopped trying to suppress it, once he discovered that.)

He cleared his throat and shrugged. "They're protective of what I stand for. My lineage. My kingdom. What they perceive is right and wrong with it," he said, frowned, explained, then sighed. "I am seldomly in that equation."

Her hand disconnected from her face, and the look she gave him then was full of sad compassion. Yet to her utmost credit, she did not even attempt to try to talk him out of the thought, out of what he knew to be true.

He was the only child of a dead king who had had no living relatives left even when he lived. He was the lone, living carrier of Earth's magic after a history of fratricide and following miscarriage after miscarriage, until eventually death had taken away any further tries. The queen regent was not of royal blood. There was no sibling nor uncle or cousin who could take the throne should something happen to him. Earth's holy magic would die with him if he were to die tonight.

He didn't flatter himself to exclude this information when regarding the peculiar way that he was shielded from contact.

But of course she knew all that. All the solar system knew all that, and the infamous historic wars that caused their shame - and perhaps partly in consequence, their so irate feelings of inferiority within the alliance.

"I'm protected," he tried to explain. "I have the same number of personal guardians as even you, the heiress of the whole Silver Millennium Empire."

Her head bobbed and she threw a pointed look down to the frazzled hubbub that were currently his Shitennou and their currently so squirrely subordinates. And yes, he was well aware that these weren't the Senshi down there with them. That she was able to run off down to a different _planet_ easily enough that there was no army trampling the palace's rose bushes in pursuit of _her_ at midnight.

"People on Earth are very… intense about the magic of the Golden Crystal. It's become more of a…" he sighed, broke off, shrugged back his shoulders, and the movement popped a kink in his back noisily.

Her head was tilted at him, curious, but he never finished the thought.

When she clambered down from the windowsill, dropping back on her heels and pivoting around, he couldn't help but feel the tension drop from his shoulders now that her feet finally fully touched the ground again.

He followed her gaze as her eyes roamed across this dim lighted attic reading room. Across the small cabriole legged tables and settees, the low, antique and half empty bookcases filled with unimportant and more frivolous tomes in this rather forgotten little hidden-away part of the palace on the upper galleries, until her gaze fell on the far wall. The portrait of him in its golden frame, like its many, many copies and varieties all across the palace and the kingdom and the planet.

He flinched. This portrait in particular was more ridiculous than even the statues. He looked like an arrogant douche, no better than his boastful, holier-than-thou forefathers. He hoped she knew it was the fashion to depict him so, and not his choosing.

The old, unwaxed, unfit arenberg parquet creaked under her precious bare feet as she padded across to the painting. The floors up here weren't as lavish as down in the halls and lower galleries. These were supposed to be part of the service rooms.

( _Bare_. Her feet were _bare_. Unsocked, untethered, as if she was a night fairy instead of a Crown Princess. As if she'd stumbled to his planet right from— no, he didn't even have any idea where one would get to be barefoot. Unsocked. Except— no, he didn't even _dare_ to imagine her bed.)

He hurried after her, tried not to be embarrassed as she studied his image so very openly again.

"They sound very practiced in their search," she remarked, her eyes on the canvas, but they both heard the sounds.

Well, yeah. They were. Very much so. And it should not come as a surprise to her. After all, he had met her on a night where he was doing just that, as well. Sneaking out. Escaping. Albeit more planned, that day. More routine. His Shitennou out with him. But this was not possible now. They couldn't know.

(They would know. Too soon. Too late. Not yet.)

But that's not what she was asking.

"It's not…" he cleared his throat. "It's not actually in my nature to be the center of attention at all times," he explained.

She wasn't asking, ' _do you?_ '. She was asking, ' _why you, too?_ '.

She nodded.

He didn't have to explain, of course, that it was, very much, in the nature of his rank - regardless of whether he fit that profile or not. And of course, he knew she was no stranger to constant observation. Though he supposed that she actually enjoyed spending her days around people.

She didn't run to be unseen, unlike him. She ran to be free. Like him.

Sometimes he wondered if he would get away with wearing a mask, once he was king.

He stood so close (too close) he could feel the flutter of her thin, pale dress (even flimsier than the ceremonial one, and he hadn't thought it possible) as it moved with her sigh, her head tilted up at his image.

"Has it always been like this?" she asked in a more hushed voice.

He blinked. "The portrait?"

She smiled, turned, flicked her eyes up and stepped away. One flutter of that mesmerizing, too-translucent dress (and he tried so hard to keep his eyes trained to her face politely, this was the future empress of the silver alliance, after all, his very own sovereign), and she trailed her fingers over the thick spines of a few, selected dusty books left behind on a low table.

"The protection. Its intensity," she corrected.

Ah.

"I suppose it got worse when my father died."

She frowned. And yes, everyone knew too that his father died when he was but a young boy, the Queen Regent reigning - until he could - for longer now than some of his forefathers.

"Their purpose is to keep me alive until I father legitimate, and only legitimate children, and pass the Golden Crystal on to more capable hands than my own, to the womb of someone not unworthy," he said and flinched at his own tone. It sounded like a recital. "I'm afraid my offspring will probably inherit all that circus outside. And thus the circle begins anew."

He trailed off, more awkward than before. He'd only said the truth, of course. But speaking to the woman that made his heart speed, about children he was to have that could never be hers, was…

He cleared his throat.

Her shoulders moved with her sigh, her back to him, one elegant finger at a thick tome of fairy tales.

"Who all is unworthy, then?" she asked, her voice quite odd.

Outside, joining the cacophony of male voices in uproar, he could hear barking. He guessed they'd started bringing out the hounds to his search. Oh joy.

"Pretty much anyone, it seems," he croaked back.

She turned to him, and he startled a bit. Moved closer to him, passing his stilted form by, and slowly sat on the small pink chaise longue to his left. It bounced when she sat, rusty springs creaking noisily, and coughed up dust. He flinched.

This room wasn't fit for someone like her. Whatever had he been thinking to bring her here?

Then again, this whole _palace_ wasn't fit for her. _He_ wasn't fit for her.

"Someone has to be," she said, leaning back, and crossed those so very visible legs under that outrageously soft-looking fabric as it shifted across her like waves, and it sped up his heart. "If your role is to father a lineage?"

He averted his eyes perhaps too shyly, stood too straight, and shrugged uncomfortably.

"The priests and court decide," he said. "They claim they wait for signs and divine intervention. Nowadays it's an excuse to look for someone pious and devout and healthy. Someone 'ideal' who will have the same views of the court and take pride in being a vessel, and then I will marry her on the spot once I'm king, and the court will watch over the consummation henceforth."

She frowned.

"Until then, I remain untouched."

She frowned even harder.

"Does that ever make you mad?" she asked.

Of course, it did.

He licked his lips, averted his gaze, and brushed his finger along the same book-spine she had caressed before. Embossed on the leather binding was the stylized image of a prince and princess kissing.

He fought really hard not to blush.

"The people of Earth don't take this matter lightly. Terran magic is their pride. It's holy, here. The Golden Crystal in the wrong hands has thrown Earth's civilization back centuries. The wars that never ended."

He tried to say it lightly, of course.

"'Power split is power lost,' is what they say here." He brushed his fingers in the trails left in the dust by her fingertips. "That's why I can't… um…"

He lost the battle and blushed.

The springs in the chaise longue creaked and Serenity moved on it as she threw him the most incredulous look. "Do Terrans not know of silphium?"

It took him a second, blinking. And then, when he got it, he laughed. It barked out and she frowned even harder, and he shrugged.

He threw her a smile, pacing around her almost bashfully. "You will have noticed Terrans don't exactly trust the word of someone easily. Perhaps not always without reason."

"And so you're protected," she stated.

He lifted a shoulder, let it drop. "So I am."

Outside, it got abruptly quieter. He supposed they'd split up by now. Half of them perusing the perimeter, the other half heading for the town.

She got up, the translucent white fabric shifting around her like water, and with two strides, she was in front of him and looking up.

She stood so close he could see the rich flow of brightest colors in her eyes, the kaleidoscope of her iris like plasma patterns in the ocean, and perhaps he stooped down too low to see.

His heart hiccuped in his chest.

She hadn't been this close to him on her own volition in so long now. Not since he'd fucked up. Not since he'd had to fight for this. Like a curious dance of approach and retreat, of restraint and release, they'd been teetering on an edge of his making.

Yet, here she was.

"Constant observation whether or not someone is going to seduce you away," she observed with a tilt of her head and a small smile around those pink lips he knew the taste of.

"Pretty much."

His voice was suddenly dry.

She stepped back and he exhaled. But when she hopped to sit on the low table on the other side of him instead, reached for the kissing prince and princess with one corner of her mouth quirked up, it didn't get much better.

"And?" she asked, her finger tracing the lines that made up the prince. "Are you being seduced?"

His heart was a cage, but he snorted. "No, I'm not."

She looked at him as if he was being dense, her smile so very, very mischievous as she slipped the book beside her, and placed her chin so attractively, so demurely in her hand. Tilted. Sweet. So at odds with her words.

"Oh, no," she said with a clearer smile, wider, amused eyes, a nod. "You are."

He shook his head. "Uh-uh," he made, and it caused her brows to flutter.

"There is nothing in me left that needs seducing, Your Highness," he croaked.

He was already thoroughly seduced.

He didn't move his eyes from hers. Didn't even blink. It all vibrated almost tangible in the air between them, daring her to understand, daring her to take the lead.

A lingering look, searching and open, until she licked her lips, and then a small smile grazed it.

Her eyes flickered to his chest, her line of sight.

"We can't."

His stomach plummeted, but then she pinched the hem of his tunic between two fingers.

"And yet at least there's _one_ thing you wouldn't have to worry about, of course. With me," she whispered.

Rationalisation in a sea of treason. A lone rose in a sea of thorns. But they didn't want to know that, then.

It was silly, really. She wasn't even touching him. Just moved the air where she'd lifted the fabric of his clothing, and yet his skin broke out in goosebumps where that air had hit. He was more alert, more high-strung in this moment than he had ever been in his entire life.

"We're quite at different ends, here," she elaborated, as if she had to.

He knew the stories, of course. They told them here as blasphemous horror tales, as abominations. Nothing was scarier to power-hungry men than a woman who could not be controlled by a swollen womb. A woman who did not need a man to procreate.

She wasn't human. Instead, like her mother, she was lifted straight from the cauldron where the stars were born. The Silver Crystal in her veins would only ever allow for a carbon copy of herself as the heir of the Silver Millennium. It would never mix. She could never have his child.

He, the virgin king. She, the empress free to bed whomever she liked without consequence.

She, floating around in gossamer fabrics free to hide nothing to the eye. He, locked up in his towers wrapped in protective armor.

And yet both of them caged vessels for a power and a cause that forced their hand in every matter of their lives.

His skin was singing in temptation. In the idea of loopholes and freedom and understanding. He was so fully, so utterly lured in.

How tragically ironic. That the offspring of the woman this planet feared most might be the only woman he could be with without the threat of their worst fears.

Her hand travelled up, slow and careful as though he were a skittish animal, and maybe he was. It settled on the fabric, pushing it against his skin, and he could feel the press of her cool hand through the fabric on his flushed-hot chest.

He had to swallow against the tremor it created.

"They call it the holy seed," he confessed, croaking and embarrassed, to her hand.

Confessed because he needed to. Because he really, really needed to. Needed her to understand why he acted the way he did. Why he wanted the way he did. Needed her to understand things he did not understand himself.

He'd spent months trying to get her back, when he'd not reacted fast enough, not explained fast enough, and she'd said goodbye for the first of many, many times. He wouldn't make that same mistake again. Wouldn't cause her to be reasonable. Considerate.

He needed her to consume him, he needed her to stay. He needed her to know.

Her fourth finger twitched. He didn't look up from her hand.

"It's only for the one holy womb. I'm not even allowed to touch… um." He swallowed. "It."

She tilted her head, brow creasing. He looked.

Her eyes were so open, so waiting. It was unbearable.

"It's not allowed to be spilled anywhere but into its holy vessel. No hand, no mouth, no anything."

And then her eyebrows lowered too much, and she took her hand _away_ , and he was afraid he'd phrased it wrong, that she might think he didn't—

"...That's horrible…" she said, took a step back.

He followed her, closed the gap back up with one broad step, alarmed. Looked down and searched her eyes.

"It…" he started. Trailed off. "...Yeah."

Her eyes flickered back to the painting. That horrible painting. That impassive, stern look, the authoritative air, the high chin, and he wanted to throw it out the window to the hounds so she might no longer look at it.

She touched the golden frame. Ran one finger down the edge.

When he dutifully turned to stand next to her, still glancing at her from the side, her eyes looked thoughtful.

"...do you believe it?" she asked the painting.

He sighed, deep and hard. Rubbed one clammy hand down his face.

He did when he was young. Of course, he did. Believed what he was told. How could he not?

He cleared his throat and confessed to the stern grimace of the idealized Crown Prince of the Golden Kingdom, oils and golden frame. "I bawled like I'd murdered someone when I came in my sleep when I was 13." Then he cringed. "Sorry, that's…"

He was about to backtrack, of course, but she wouldn't let him. Turned back to him. Those kaleidoscope eyes sharp and intense, she interrupted him.

"How about today?" she asked.

He nearly choked. _Today_? Was she asking— What was she _asking_?

"What about it?" His voice was perhaps a bit high, and this time it was him who kept his gaze studiously towards the painting.

The soft swish of her skirt as she turned brushed against his leg.

"Do you ever spill the 'holy seed'?" she asked in a tone that was all innocence. As if she asked him if he'd recently travelled.

His face exploded in heat.

It was one thing to press against her in a heated kiss. It was quite another to— to—

Outside, Kunzite bellowed. This time, his voice was clear to make out. Louder. Closer. And his expletive used was oddly underlining this current conversation.

He watched her visibly try to keep a straight face at the timing of it.

Of course, _those_ were words she would know. Go figure.

He was a stuttering, red-faced mess. "I've— I've never—"

"On your own I mean," she supplied with an easy smile, fully turned to him, fully watching him.

His face had never felt hotter. But he licked his lips and couldn't help but flick his eyes to look at hers, couldn't help but picture the way he pressed against her in the gardens, against his statue in the moonlight.

He ripped his eyes back to the painting. "It's… very hard not to learn to feel shame about something you are told all your life is the biggest kind of sin."

The swish of her dress again, this time to come closer.

And then her gentle little hand at his chin, turning his face to her frowning one.

Kunzite's roar outside. Right beneath this very wing. "WELL, GO _CHECK THE FUCKING PALACE, THEN_!"

She didn't bat an eyelash at the ruckus outside, at the - to her - so foreign, bellowed words. Instead, her eyes were wide and calm and waiting and jumping between both of his, as if she were trying to look through him, as if she was searching for something, and he held his breath in careful, terrified anticipation until she found it.

The bark of the dogs rang off the palace walls, closer, and Endymion held his breath as the Moon Princess slowly stroked her fingers down his jaw, his neck, and dipped into his collarbone.

Every tendon in his neck was pulsing, his breath a heaving mess, his heart hammering in his chest, and he stood as still, still, still as he could.

But he couldn't keep the shiver in. When she ran a finger down the part in his tunic, the laces splitting open at her pull on them, her cool fingers against his burning chest.

His skin - his whole _body_ \- broke out in goosebumps where her fingernails brushed untouched skin.

"And?" she whispered to his lips, moved up onto her tiptoes. "Do you want to stay untouched?"

"No," he croaked, breaking and hushed in the dim, dim light. "No, I do not."

* * *

Remembering this in a different lifetime, when he was so plagued by all of what came after, he often wondered how he'd been so reckless. How rebellion had clouded all his senses. How he'd so easily broken out of his cages back then, _wanted_ to break out of them, before he knew what happened when he did.

And while it wasn't that they hadn't fought this at all - they _had_ , oh, how they had, and she so much more than him - every goodbye had just driven him to greater recklessness. Weak and terrified and powerlessly enthralled. Or so he'd excused it, at least. Excused when they simply gave in so completely.

And so, it was still in this very room, the wood of the staircases creaking so loudly under the boots of the guards as they marched up the lower and upper galleries behind this blessedly closed door to search the palace so strategically for him, that he would later throw his head back against that heinous portrait, against that very symbol of his prison, so hard it would fall off its hinges and the frame would smash and break on the ground when he would come with his hands in her hair and spill into the mouth of the Crown Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom, Heiress of the Silver Millennium and alleged enemy of his peoples, his superior in every way, and had never felt so free.

She'd undressed him calmly.

He'd trembled and shaken as she watched his eyes while her fingers confidently ripped the laces from his clothes. His tunic first, until the part on his chest was so wide he would be able to slip it off. Removed the armor from his hips and got rid of both. Pulled the pants from his boots with a decisive yank, then shushed him with her lips to his mouth when his breath quickened as her hand brushed again and again against the bulge in his breeches - so very, very painfully hard, so throbbing and overwhelmed - as she so slowly, so noisily unlaced him.

His cock had been so helplessly wet by the time his breeches pooled on the floor by his ankles, and he stood jutting and twitching and hard and naked except for his boots in this dim lit room with the hounds barking outside against a portrait of his plight.

The high-pitched whine that escaped his throat when the soft pads of her fingers first touched the veiled pink head of him was almost pitiable, and her other hand that touched his cheek, his chin, to keep his eyes on hers as something he fell into. Her eyes so full of compassion as she stood in that untouched white dress on the tips of her toes of her bare feet and whispered against his shaking mouth.

Whispered into his mouth as she stroked him wet down his cock and back up. Whispered about how pleasure was one of the great gifts. Given to us and to be cherished. How it was something we should treasure. Something that was meant to be enjoyed. Something we should celebrate instead of be ashamed of. Something that was beautiful. Whispered until he pulsed in her hand and she dropped to her knees and he almost cried as he babbled, embarrassed, shocked.

"Your— Your H- _High_ ness!" he'd cried, scandalized, turned on, and it died with a guttural moan.

He'd been so very, very surprised by the overwhelming sensation of her hot mouth wrapped around his cock. So absolutely thrown. It was so very, very different from what he'd not dared to ever imagine.

But it had been so drilled into him. The idea of it somehow being a dominant and active act for a man. The hateful, leering jokes he'd heard boastful men make when they didn't think him listening ringing in his ears, of women on their knees and sucking in obedience. Of an act of disrespect and power.

His first instinct had been to protest even when he wanted it so badly. How could he do this to _her_ of all people? His future sovereign?

It took barely a second to understand he wasn't doing anything to her. That it was her doing _everything_ to him.

Her hand, firm and pressing and confident, pulling back the skin on him, her tongue flat against the slit of him, making him dizzy with sensation and weak in all his limbs and jerking so very, very helplessly, so very at her mercy.

No, this didn't feel like he'd learned to expect. She may be the one on her knees, yet all power here lay with her. His dick literally between her teeth - if she wanted, she could end the Royal lineage right here, right now - and him a powerless, passive, trembling, shaking mess.

How could anyone experience this in any other way?

He'd never felt more vulnerable. He'd never felt so freed, so reckless, so absolutely taken. His trembling naked limbs in the hands of this white goddess.

It didn't take long. Of course it didn't. It was too overwhelming, too erotic, too much - so forbidden, so treasonous, so _right._

She sucked the cum right out of him and there was nothing he could do, no way he could hold it back. He babbled a warning as he felt the tightening in his balls, her hand at their seam, felt the hot rise and press as he exploded, but she kept her lips around him.

And then she opened her mouth and let it all dribble out - she'd aimed for the lifted hem of her dress but some spilled on the floor and the image of that fucking _holy seed_ on the ground and on _her_ \- so _blasphemous_ , so _arousing_ \- was enough to make him twitch alive again. Would ring in his mind forever, and she noticed. And she smirked.

He was breathing hard, wide-eyed and wondrous and weak, when she got up from her knees, rose, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and the corner of her lip with her thumb.

It came away white and treasonous and she held it out for him to taste and his heart hammered so hard she must have heard. Even the guards must have heard.

She didn't press it to his mouth. She simply offered. Waited. It was his choice if he wanted to do that or not, if he wanted to cross every last forbidden line.

The painting by his feet crunched as he clumsily stepped forward, trapped by his pants around his boots and his tunic twisting around him on the floor, but grabbed her wrist with both his hands and moaned as he pressed his tongue against her thumb and licked and sucked it clean.

Her breathing came as hard as his, her eyes as dark as his.

"How does it taste, then?" Her voice was low and rasping. "The ' _holy seed_ '?"

Awful. Amazing.

"Like freedom," he croaked, just as the sound of boots spilled up to the upper galleries at last, the door vibrating with the shouts and sound of other doors around them being banged open, and then pressed his hands into her hair and his tongue into her mouth.

She tasted of him.

He wanted her to taste like him always.

* * *

In hindsight, it was entirely unfathomable how, in the beginning, he could have _liked_ it. The secret of it. The danger of it. The rebellion of it.

How the very things that would render him a bawling boy only a year later, that would make him press his wet face into the faint trace of the faded echoes of her smell in his pillows knowing it would always stay a secret, that she could never actually be his, could have ever been something he'd _desired_.

But he _had_. He'd _loved_ it, in the beginning.

His too reckless heart that had previously found joy in getting away with sneaking out of the palace grounds here and there, climbing up the highest fences to be gone for just a bit. And that same rebellious core in him had revelled, had not been able to keep the smug away, because undetected stolen strolls in stolen clothes among the commoners were _nothing_ against the thrill of suddenly getting away with eating out the heiress of the greatest empire ever known to man.

He wasn't even allowed to _touch_ that dick before he was married off, and here he was thrusting it into the most precious, most forbidden woman, right under all their eyes and no one saw. The second most powerful person in the known galaxy, so many, many lightyears outranking him. Got away with the most scandalous things in the most sinful places, things he had been taught to be ashamed of to even think. Got away with making her throw her head back in abandon right there in the temple he swore his oaths in as a young boy to never even think of such a thing, her moans echoing off the hollowed dome built by men that had hated everything she stood for.

And it had been _glorious_. It had been _freeing_. In the beginning.

To take every risk and make it worse and worse and worse. To make memories that would haunt him across time. To fuck her in every corner of both their kingdoms and to fuck her in the very bed he was to publicly lose his virginity one day way too soon. In the very bed he was supposed to spill his seed in for the very first time, under all their eyes to see.

If only they knew how carelessly he spilled it in the enemy all this time.

But her hair fanned out so beautifully against the Royal sigil embroidered in his sheets.

How, once he'd gotten over his every last learned inhibition so much too fast, tossed the shame and allowed himself to be so recklessly free, it had been the most free he'd ever felt, and left him rendered willingly helpless as he worshipped the siren who had shown him the way.

His hands slipped into hers, lacing them together, as he pressed them into his mattress framing her face, as he held her eyes and pounded into her. As he shuddered from the tip of his spine to the tip of his cock, violently, at the way she mewled into his mouth as he pressed his body against hers, at the way it made their bodies sing.

"Shhh," he'd hushed into her mouth, mirroring the way she'd done to him that first night she'd shown him what it felt like to desire. So often, so regularly, his tongue against her lower lip, against her teeth, against her throat, against her breasts, against every inch of her skin. His laboured breath in her lungs as he'd freed one hand from hers and brought it between them in the most practiced movements, his thumb down her skirts, her bare limbs, her nightgowns, her sheets, her slit as wet as his cock was hard because this turned her on as well. Stroking in the pitch dark of his silent chambers or hers, in broad daylight in the most sacred or most common places, until she twitched and writhed and hit her soft head back against his embroidered pillows or a meadow of flowers, trying not to cry out.

Because she was right. This was dangerous. This was frightening. They needed to stop.

And yet, back then, it was the most potent aphrodisiac of them all.

The greatest rebellion any Prince of Earth might ever manage, and he wanted the whole palace, the whole planet, to smell like her. Like them. Wanted to never have these sheets changed again. Wanted them to stain every sheet in two kingdoms.

"They could hear," she whispered into his mouth, when her lips and fingers played his skin, and his did hers, played it like the most complicated, most beautiful instrument known to man, and he was too loud, or she was, or both.

"Let them," he'd whispered, when the fear had made way for thrill, when they'd become stupid and blind and forgotten that yes, it was, in fact, so dangerous, and yet he'd push into her as if this was a victory and not one endless loss, just as he pushed her over the edge with the strokes of his thumb or his tongue in her wetness.

When he'd stopped. When he hadn't tried anymore to swallow her moan. When the sound echoed in the silent room too freely, too dangerously, for the first time, turning him on in a way he couldn't even quite understand how it might ever be so powerful. When the mere sound of her loud voice so uncaged was what had made him come in her mere moments after he'd first thrust inside this most precious person who would ever live, equally too loud.

Yes. In the beginning it had been exciting. In the beginning he'd considered himself lucky. This was dangerous. They'd said it over and over.

And yet his cocky ass had never really fully believed it. After all, they'd been cheating every rule and every law. The man with the caged magic cock sworn to celibacy so he might never pass on Earth's magic illegitimately, and the one woman in the whole galaxy that he would never be able to impregnate. Deep down, he'd truly believed they'd cheated destiny. Had truly believed they'd find a way.

Back when the hushed warnings of, "this is dangerous," and "someone might see," had made him _harder_. Back when the permanent absence was something that made his blood boil and want her _more_ instead of being a permanent reminder of his losses.

Back when even the memory of shushing her in the dark over and over and over again, and her doing the same for him, were a powerful drug. When the memory of getting to swallow her moans over parted lips to stay quiet would be enough to turn him on in the most inappropriate sort of situations, from stuffy audiences to court meetings to garment fittings.

When the memory of her awfully inaccurate disguises and the fact she got away with them anyway, and the way he ripped them off her with his hands and teeth only one wall away from the people who would burn him for it, was enough to make his blood sing and for him to want more and more and more.

But it wasn't him who would pay for it, like he'd always assumed. Like a shame-faced teenaged version of him - back when he'd first been so haunted by the new and so demonized stirrings of his body until he could not take it anymore and surrendered to them, ashamed and afraid - had feared when he committed sin and touched himself in the dark under the sheets, and got away with that, too. No righteous clerics or judges would come to punish him, would come to take his cock or life away to teach him a lesson. It wasn't him they would want to kill when he transgressed.

It was her.

He'd been so, so stupid.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THERE YOU GO! One more part of this to go (I guess you can guess the theme of the next chapter lol.) A lot of people have asked me to write two things over the years: A silmil story, and a blowjob. Here you got both. And for all those thinking I dislike writing blowjobs: I actually really don't. There's something really thrilling and powerful and arousing about pleasing your partner, regardless of gender or who is the passive or active receiver of it. What I do dislike with a passion though is the one-sided and honestly illogical association we have about blowjobs. WHO ever came up with the narrative that it's a submissive and passive thing for a women, and why do we keep believing that? The. Dick. Is. Between. The. Teeth. Let's stop pretending this isn't an extremely vulnerable (and precious!) act for a man, and treat it a bit more equally. We're not going on and on about how we shoved our vagina into someone's face and laugh about it either. Anyway, I'm hopping off my soapbox now lol.
> 
> Anyway, eternal thanks still to Antigone2 (she's EVEN MAKING ME MOODBOARDS FOR THIS FIC NOW YOU CAN FIND THAT PARTICULAR AMAZINGNESS ON TUMBLR!) and my hero Uglygreenjacket! Thank you guys for having my back with this story and always!
> 
> AND, thank you to everyone who has reviewed and commented so far! I see you all, and I LOVE YOU GUYS, and you make me feel less lonely during a pandemic especially as I shout into the generally so lonely void that is the internet, so thank you thank you thank you for your lovely words! I appreciate you so much!


	3. Part III: The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here it is, the end of this! (But of course it's not REALLY the end! After all, we all know it
> 
> ends (or starts back up) with a test paper and a couple of dorks in front of Osa-P, finding each other, so please excuse the drama!
> 
> Anyway, my beta has been having the worst two weeks at work ever, but I do want to get this out finally, and today is June 30th, Usagi's birthday, and so, as an exception, this comes to you unbeta-ed. Please forgive my German ass some mistakes, lol!
> 
> Anyway, thank you for everyone who wrote me a wonderful review, or made me moodboards on tumblr (!), OR EVEN DREW ME SERENITY IN THAT FLOWERY DRESS (looking at you Beej). And thank you thank you Antigone2 for cheerleading me on in this! You guys are so good to me, and 200% the reason I'm still here and writing! Thank you for every nice word and here are a few last words on this story for you, now!

* * *

Part III: The End

* * *

Perhaps, it had all been inevitable. Perhaps, he should have seen it coming. Perhaps, he'd never had any chance at all.

After all, the very Earth's gravity tended to go a bit nuts when the moon was involved. How should it be any different for the Crown Prince of Earth when faced with the incalculably disarming effect the very presence of this Lunar goddess had on the threads of his very being?

And if, for just a moment, he stopped thinking in excuses, and stopped blaming gravity and destiny for every last reckless risk he'd chosen to take in the name of love, he would have to face the fact that he had been willing to take every chance even when he knew he was walking into every doom with seeing eyes and a knowing heart, simply because he was clinging to a sliver of pale hope.

A loophole he might find. A law that might be bent under his will. The arrogance of a royal still hoping he might get to puppeteer once he became king, instead of being the puppet. Because he'd grown up a pampered prince so used to getting his every last mundanest wish fulfilled, even when he knew that was only the case because beyond that was no freedom for him at all where it really mattered.

He'd trade in every southern ripened peach from every prized orchard delivered in the mornings from across the globe in his childhood just because they were his favorite, and from his youth he would give every rare expensive thread spooled into his robes because he liked the lavish softness, and every expert teacher taken from their studies to put into his lonesome palace classrooms too big and too golden for just one snot-nosed, royal boy. Every last sham privilege he'd had that disguised itself as free will and he hadn't understood the emptiness of it, he not only would give it, he wanted to be rid of it all. Had wanted to hand it over long before he ever met her, long before he'd understood what he was really robbed of.

The freedom of choosing her.

Of course, he chose her anyway.

So very forbidden, so very dishonoring every rule placed upon him, so very treasonous.

It had been inevitable. All of it. Her gasps into his mouth when he made her come with his fingers, his tongue, his cock, and her gasps when they ran for their lives to cheat destiny another second in the end, after millions had died because he was too weak to resist. Deep in his soul, buried and locked and ignored, he'd known from the start this might be the price to pay. And yet he'd begged for it to happen. The future king of Elysion falling to his knees in broken pride at the feet of the heiress of the Silver Millennium. Bawling frustrated, angry tears into the warm lap of the very person his kingdom so despised, the symbol they blamed all their grievances on, in a degrading, emasculating image he might have been stoned for had anyone seen, and yet he couldn't give a damn at all. Because all that mattered was that she had tried to say goodbye yet again, back when they still believed they could. Tried to be reasonable because they had to, and he'd thrown all caution to the wind. When he committed treason just to see her and it was a prize he paid for even just a simple stolen kiss.

Because he was trapped forever missing her even when she was right there. Because he needed her anyway. Because she was his world when he was already supposed to have another.

He'd known what he was doing, at least he thought he did. Arrogant and reckless and full of false hope, he did it anyway.

He'd take it all back if it meant she would live. The one price he'd never calculated in. Too late, he realised that if everything burned, so would she. But he only learned that in the very last breath he would take, and it would be a knowledge he'd take with him into the burned ash that remained of the moon soil that would make up their grave, and beyond.

A mourning ghost haunting a young boy's mind, whispering of caution and regret.

* * *

It was the custom in the Golden Kingdom that a married couple wear a golden ring on their hand. A symbol quite quaint, quite laughed at in the rest of the solar system. A sign of binding, of possession. A tradition quite reflecting of humanity, they said, and how humanity so ached to possess.

But he wanted to be possessed by her so very, very badly. So very, very openly.

He hadn't been able to wear his father's ring. Of course he hadn't. Instead, Serenity had presented him with two small, thin bands, moon stone set in both, and an apologetic flutter in her brow he'd kissed away in reverence.

She wore his on a chain against her heart, wider for his bigger finger, hidden for all who did not know. He wore hers, so tiny it barely fit his little finger, on a chain in his pocket, dangling from the star-shaped pocket watch she'd given him so many, many moons ago.

Of course they would never be able to wear their wedding bands openly. Until the day they would die, they would have worn them on their fingers only once: the night they were so secretly wed in the gardens of Elysion.

But they wanted to. They wanted until they no longer were. And because the want was so strong, they wore each other's rings in secret as a precaution. So he wouldn't be tempted to rip it from its chain, if he were to wear his own, and push it onto his finger in an angry display of open defiance right in front of his mother, right in front of the rebellion, right in front of all the lords and ladies and judges and consorts and phony advisors of his court, when it all, once again, became too much.

But it burned against his pocket. Her ring. It burned every day.

* * *

He never glared at that crescent moon sigil so hard as when it was Venus wearing it in her stead.

And how the court that despised her so did not even notice when it wasn't she they were thundering at.

Peace negotiations. These were supposed to be peace negotiations. For a war in waiting caused by his own people. So much so that it was unsafe for his own wife on his own planet to attend them herself.

He was an angry, irritable, hissing mess of a man throughout the whole ordeal and it didn't help their cause one bit.

He'd approached her with the fiercest glare, the coldest demeanor, and hated the way he felt the glee of his lords at this hostile display towards what they supposed to be the rightful Moon Princess even as he bent to hiss right into Venus's face.

It wasn't the first time he'd sat next to Venus instead of Serenity. Of course it wasn't. Serenity's decoy was a staple on his planet at this point in time, had been for so long.

Over the years he'd sat next to Venus in demure politeness, trying to prove his worth to her authoritative gaze. Had pleaded and begged for details of Serenity's well-being during a lengthy 'goodbye', or tales from her childhood alike when he yearned for her too much, or even, in the early days, tried to gauge what the Princess might think of him by ways of her First Guardian, all of it in a wide spectrum from attempted subtlety to open despair. Had grown to laugh with her and glare at her and grovel at her feet.

But he hadn't seen Serenity in months.

Hadn't seen her since the night he stole her in secret.

And she was supposed to be here. _Now_. She'd promised. She would have been here. She would not have broken her word.

"Where _is_ she?" he'd demanded, hot-headed and infuriated and in search of a culprit so badly it was almost a relief he had a convenient one right here.

Venus, to her credit, had held her head high and not flinched away at all, but met his glare with one of her own. _This_ princess was not accustomed to bowing, either.

But then her gaze had flickered, for the briefest moment, to behind his shoulder, and he'd felt the uncomfortable jolt of armor to his right, and he'd known.

Of fucking course.

"We thought it best that I would travel in her stead today," she said levelly. Challengingly.

 _We_.

Not we, the Senshi. Not we, Serenity and he.

No, it was we, the Senshi and his Shitennou. Making his decisions. Making _her_ decisions. Now that they thought they'd finally gone too far, finally risked too much.

(And they had.)

He whirled around in purest anger, but Kunzite's gaze was made of controlled, levelled calm.

Endymion toppled over his high seat ( _higher_ than what was Serenity's rightful seat at the table, the _gall_ of them!) as he left in a flurry of cape and rage.

* * *

The day he first realised he would never get his way was a Monday. The day dedicated to the moon of all things.

"The court is gathering today," Kunzite announced that morning without meeting his eyes. Eyes averted from the royal bed.

Endymion glared as he threw back the covers, stepped into his robe. "For what purpose?"

"Arranging for Leda's Call," he said evenly, watching him, and Endymion stumbled.

The traditional ceremony to choose his bride.

"It will be held in the royal gardens this year, since the rose bloom is so plentiful this year," Kunzite went on, as if he hadn't just said what he'd just said.

Endymion snatched up his watch, clutched at her ring. Unhidden if only in his bedchambers.

He threw Kunzite the darkest look of his life and waited.

Kunzite only looked back, waiting, and it made Endymion even angrier.

"...I'm married."

Kunzite's brow jumped, his own gaze grew darker.

He turned, ripped open the thick red curtains from Endymion's tall windows and violently tied them away with the golden ropes, tassels moving erratically. The sunlight that newly filtered into the room felt like a window to a different world right about now.

"You'll marry, Your Highness."

Endymion was ready to throw the bed, was ready to shout down the halls.

But Kunzite's voice was ice. He didn't look at him. Tied the curtains with whipping motions.

"You're not the only one giving their life for this kingdom. For your people."

And so Endymion's voice was ice, too. How fucking dare he.

"I'm married." Endymion's jaw cracked as he spoke between clenched teeth. "I can't be married again."

Two, three whips more, and the other curtain was tied. Kunzite's shoulders dropped as he turned.

And waited.

"The priest that married us will have to confess my treason…" Endymion said, glaring. "It cannot happen. The high priest cannot marry me if it comes to light. And it must."

Kunzite just sighed.

"It can be kept confidential," Endymion reasoned. "No one must know. Officially, I'll just be the first unmarried sovereign."

His gaze didn't change. But Endymion waited it out.

A match of wills, until one of them broke.

Kunzite broke first.

"That's your plan?" he finally said.

"It can work." Endymion licked his lips, his heart hammering in his chest. It could. It had to work.

But Kunzite sighed, and turned.

It was when he was back at the door that he spoke again, turned away from him.

"Leda's Call is on the first. You have two weeks."

Endymion smashed his fist against the antique coffer next to his bed.

"I'm _married_."

Another sigh, and Kunzite turned around. This time, his eyes were filled with compassion. With pity.

"That priest you were playing your cards on?" he asked.

Endymion paled. He knew. He knew before Kunzite finished speaking. He should have known.

Of course, he should have known.

"He's long dead," Kunzite said with a long, pointed, meaningful look.

His shock must have shown on his face. Kunzite's voice was softer as Endymion collapsed to his knees.

"You'll marry," he still said. "You'll keep the peace."

Endymion shook his head, yanked at his hair.

"You'll keep us all alive."

* * *

The circus that followed was excruciating and this garden fête the crowning torture.

The women were powdered, their dresses bright and colorful and expensive, their fans whipping like lashes. Women as far as he could see from up here, conversing with straight spines and fake laughter and raised crystal glasses like battle shields and eyes that of competitors. There was a group of people by the lotus pond and his statue, conversing about the merits of being the future Terran queen at the very place he'd given his heart.

It was the main event. The final viewing. Whomever they would choose, she was here tonight.

Almost every women in attendance was meant to be in the running for his hand, and from up here, he could see them all. From up here, they looked like tiny play dolls. Stiff dresses barely moving with the breeze as they bounced from place to place, always alert, always watching to find him in the crowd. In between them was every member of his court. Every last lord and priest. Judging, noting, smiling brightly and assuredly.

It was disgusting.

From up here, he could pretend it didn't concern him.

"What about this one?"

Serenity's soft, sad voice didn't fit his angry scowl, didn't fit the high-strung tension in his bones so ready to snap. Instead, her small hand was soft against the sandstone, her sigh a melancholy caress.

She was nodding over the wide railing. The newly annointed high priest - a man he'd never liked, too stern, too traditional, too proud - was holding a woman's hand pressed between both of his and nodded at her with a smile so wide all his giant teeth were showing at once.

She was fair-haired and short and her dress was a flower in pastel.

He was surprised the stone of the balcony railing didn't crack under his fingertips.

"No," he bit out.

Obviously, he knew it would never be his choice.

He pressed his hand to his tunic - against the chain of his watch in his breast pocket and with it her ring against his heart. He pressed against the embroidered fabric so hard it was painful where the gold band beneath it crushed into his ribcage.

"What about her?" she said instead. Calmly. Softly. Pitifully.

She pointed her hand towards a woman with flowing red hair, emeralds for jewelry so thick they looked uncomfortably heavy, deep in conversation with the Lord Themis. … And Kunzite.

Her smile looked proud. Her eyes had a goal. And a following. He knew that. He knew her.

His lungs pinched and his throat closed and his body was a constant flood of despair and wrath and he could not handle either, much less both at the same time.

He was so irritated he wanted to dig his fingers into the sandstone until it pulverised.

"It won't happen," he snapped, his eyes a glare on the Lady Beryl.

It can't happen.

But his litany ended there. Gone were his whispered assurances. Gone because they were no longer true. They'd all toppled one by one.

"Dimi…"

She shouldn't even be here. It was nothing short of a miracle it was her today, and not Venus in her place. Knew by the fact she was here _alone_ that she was not supposed to be here at all.

Her hand was soft as it brushed against his hand. Nudged against his iron grip on the railing, the back of her left hand discreetly caressing the side of his palm the way that might be seen as an accidental touch should anyone walk onto the balcony with them, or anyone look up.

Careful. Hidden. Secret.

Her left hand. Her bare left hand. It shouldn't be bare.

He growled and his hand flipped out and around and captured hers. He laced his fingers through hers aggressively, and with a yank pressed their joined hands to his chest. To her ring.

She stumbled with a gasp against his side, and he whipped his gaze around to unabashedly stare at her.

His wife was an invited guest tonight. Not to ironically be one of the contenders for his hand, no. Not that. Just to publicly _not_ be asked to bless the choice. A further act of defiance and rebellion, this time against a custom hundreds of years old.

She wasn't here for honoring a disrespectful invitation. Everyone would have told her not to come. Everyone surely did. Perhaps, most likely, no one knew she was here, again.

No, she was here because she wanted to see every last woman allowed to marry him.

And for once the disrespect against her didn't even make him angry. He would have broken had she had to stand there to have her hand kissed by them all and to bless every woman here. To have his wife bless inevitably the woman among them they would end up choosing soon. The woman he would ultimately be forced to marry. To bed. To have children with.

His throat was choked and his anger made his hands tremble, but he kept hers prisoner against his chest, and with every second of his terrified, angry gaze boring down into hers, her own eyes turned glassier and glassier.

"Maybe you'll like her," she offered, whispering, her brow puckering, and her beautiful lilting voice broke twice in such a simple sentence.

She moved her eyes away from his and down to their hands. Couldn't bear saying it any more than he could bear hearing it.

"I won't," he pressed out between clenched teeth, his eyes wet and stubbornly on her, even when hers still stubbornly remained dry and not on him.

_I won't like her. I won't have her. I won't marry. It won't happen._

He would give anything for it not to happen.

It wouldn't happen, of course. His prayers would be answered in the most horrible, most wrong way. He'd never beg for it so hard if he'd known that then, but he had. Couldn't sleep because he begged for it so ironically with his life. For divine intervention. For the dead to rise and confess to his marriage. For them to get the chance to run away and never be found. For the silver crystal to fail to protect her just once.

Anything. Anything at all.

"Please don't like her," she said then, even softer, even pitifully. "I don't want you to like her."

She said it like she'd said something horrible.

"I won't," he promised, growling, squeezing her hand even tighter against him with the utmost vehemence, and yet her possessiveness burned in his heart.

It was so very new, but Serenity was possessive. It hadn't been in her nature when he met her. Her culture wasn't possessive. She hadn't been. It was him that had taught her to be. It was them.

Now, she whispered it in his ear whenever she had the chance. Had come apart, shaking and sated, to his promises that he was hers forever, hushed over and over and over until he was hoarse, the night they were married and she rode him wearing nothing but her wedding band on her finger and the moonlight reflecting off her glimmering skin as she drew a litany of 'yours' and 'mine' from his overwhelmed lips with every strong, slow, hard, torturous grind of her hips until they collapsed in exhaustion.

It was an ugly feeling. Jealousy. He'd put it in her veins.

And yet it was the only thing that kept him from snapping. The only thing that made this unbearable situation bearable at all. Because she was here, and her eyes swept back over the women below them, her brow puckered even more, her mouth a twisted line, her hand shaking in his.

Her eyes as she scanned every woman. Every single one.

She was mad with jealousy and he wanted it all when he should pray for her not to be. But how could he?

Her eyes narrowed even further. Flicking his gaze to where she was looking, he found a woman whose hand was kissed by Jadeite of all people. His smile was easy, friendly. None of the contempt in them he held for her. For them.

With a grunt, her eyes flew back to the Lady Beryl.

Reluctantly, he released her hand. But with one stride, he was behind her, his arms around her, his boots tangling into the flowing fabric of her ceremonial white dress, and his breath in her hair as he pressed her against the railing and shushed her as she trembled in rage.

Her hand settled back over one of his and squeezed, and she continued on her quest to glare at and memorize every woman here from her place in his arms.

He had never been more reckless. They were on a balcony, in broad daylight during the biggest royal event he'd ever attended.

It wasn't even the highest balcony. The staff liked to look down upon the mingling upper class from the upper galleries, huddled together to get a glimpse of the spectacles. From every direction thus, above or below, the whole kingdom could see him press his traitorous, rapidly hardening, supposedly-publicly-virgin cock against the future empress of the Silver Millennium at the very event meant to find him a bride.

But his actual bride was as angry as him now, finally, and he was drunk on her jealousy. It grounded him. It drove him. It made him stupid.

Her whole body started to tremble, and he held her even tighter, the gossamer dress swimming around him, her bare shoulder blades shifting against his tunic, her hair a silken fountain against his mouth and fingers.

"Shhh," he hushed into her hair. Rubbed his cheek against the fair, silky strands in the way he always did - like it might be the last time he could, and it made him only needier.

She puffed out a frustrated breath so deep it moved his arms clamped so tightly around her chest with the heave of her chest, and his thumb couldn't help but stroke across the golden, round embroidery of her bodice just below her softly swollen cleavage, the pad of his finger brushing against the rough, strong threads until they glided over cool, smooth, threaded peals.

She lolled her head back against his collarbone and he tucked it beneath his chin, and even when he was pressing his half-hard cock against the small of her back, her demand still threw him like a bucket of sensation that ran along his veins.

And it definitely was a demand, even when she whispered it.

"Fuck me where they could see," she hushed. Hushed it looking down across the crowd. Hushed it reaching back around and cupping his bulge.

He sputtered. " _What_?"

Below them one woman's shrill laughter rose above the rumbled cacophony of noise of a hundred-and-more people conversing at once, and heads turned to her.

Instead of pushing Serenity away like he rationally should, he pushed against her. Even when he'd gone pale. Even when his eyes grew wide and flew to make out his Shitennou on the ground in a practiced sweep. One, two, three, four. All of them down there. None of them looking up.

Serenity didn't turn to find his gaze. She continued to glare across the crowd, but she did remove her hands and braced them on the sandstone railing. And then she pushed back against him even more insistently.

"Fuck me," she repeated. Vehement. Her head moved against his chin when she spoke. "Here. Where they could see."

His heart hammered and his adrenaline spiked and his cock jumped like a friggin traitor. He should protest. He shouldn't do it. The high priest was right _there_.

But he'd eaten this woman out in the holiest temples and let her ride him and his naked, traitorous ass on the cold seat of his future throne, and if his wife wanted to be fucked in front of every woman attempting to marry him, he would not protest. No, like every other previous fuck-you to this prison in any fucking form they'd done before, it just made him impossibly hard.

It spiked his blood and clouded his judgement and she seemed to feel quite similarly. Because when he unwound one hand from her waist to lift her skirt and brushed his palm slowly, slowly down her form, across silky fabric and then silkier skin, she shivered so hard, so relieved, that it made him inhale sharply through his nose.

He held her tighter to him by her chest, rocked into her skirts with the bulge in his breeches, and she moaned pitifully, surrendering all her weight against his chest and arms when his hand made it all the way where it was _always_ supposed to be.

When his stroking fingers met her slick, heat-flushed slit, he knew it wasn't any sort of skill that made her so very wet so very fast. He knew it was the irrational, dangerous thrill knowing they were so stupidly, so recklessly defying every rule right in front of everyone. No matter the cost.

He wasn't gonna fuck her. They were gonna fuck _them_. All of it. All of them. Fuck them all. Fuck their rules, fuck Leda's Call, fuck the high priest, fuck the holy seed.

His vision, his touch, his smell, all of it blurred hot and intense. She'd switched him on with that simple demand and he felt a bit simple, but ultimately couldn't care less. So instead, he stooped over ever so slightly, brushed the hair from her shoulders with his nose to make room for his lips and pressed them against the nape of her neck wet and hot and shivering.

"Please," she whispered, and then her breath hitched when he thumbed her clit just once.

Her thin, thin skirts were falling around her, shifting ever so slightly in a light rustle to his hand moving between her legs. Obscured by the layers and layers of fabric, but he knew. He knew this dress was so famously slightly see-through. He knew his tunic was grief-black for today's grim occasion. He knew the shadow of his arm would be seen, the back of his hand clearly contoured, even though his fingers' actions were invisible.

She was so very, very wet. Her stuttering breath his personal aphrodisiac.

She bucked her hips and rubbed against him, and he grimaced, his eyes rolling back into his head for just a moment until he released his hold on her completely, dress falling back to the floor like a waterfall, and she whined.

"No—"

But she broke off in a gasp when he grabbed her hips and rocked against her hard, her fingers twitching on either side of her on the railing, and he covered them with his own, nose in her hair, inhaling.

"Why?" he demanded right back.

A glass broke below in a sounding smash. Laughter from a group by the fountain. The gazes of women straying from their conversation partners. Looking for _him_.

"You know why," she gasped when he rocked against her ass again, and of course he did.

"I want to hear it," he whispered, and brushed his nose down the shell of her ear.

"You're mine," she growled. "Because you're mine."

Not theirs. Never theirs. Even if he was married to one of them. Would never be married to one of them because he was already hers.

He sighed, brushed her wild hair back once more, and reached to walk the pads of his fingers of his right hand up the tips of her spine where they were left bare from the middle of her back upwards. Walked them up as if her spine were a ladder. Up, up, up the softest skin he would ever feel to the part of her hair, then pressed his mouth back against the nape of her neck and inhaled like she was his salvation and not his end.

She whined, pressed against him.

Below them, the high priest excused himself from a group of women for his short introductory speech. Walked to the small dais built above the lotus pond, right behind his ridiculous statue.

Up here, just as the high priest was about to make a flowery, ridiculous speech about him in front of his flowery, ridiculous likeness that did not represent him at all —about his virtue, his holy purpose, all translating to explain to these women what everyone already knew: Sometime soon, he was supposed to put his dick in one of them— he brushed his hands along Serenity's hips, her midriff, her thighs, her abdomen, his hands digging and possessive and shifting with the silky fabric, front and back, breast and ass and hips and bare back.

She whined again, grabbed his hands and moved them back to her ass, gathered her skirts and he unfurled her impatient hands and had her drop it again.

The crowd below was quieting, expectant.

He stroked his hands slowly down the fabric over the curve of her ass, used his thumbs and fingers to ever so slowly, one by own, lift her skirt up until her knuckles on the railing were white and he chuckled just as the fanfares blared to announce the high priest's introductory speech.

When he finally touched her again, she was even wetter than before. Gasped noiselessly as his finger dragged along her just as the high priest started to greet the women. The 'bringers of the future', as he greeted them. He scoffed, twitched his fingers, and Serenity bit her lip.

Her gaze on the crowd, he decided to ignore the crowd was there. He didn't want them here. He only wanted her.

He drowned out the cheerful, aggravating voice of the new high priest, and instead listened intently to Serenity's sharp staccato breathing.

She was reaching back and blindly unlacing him with all-too-practiced fingers, and he let her.

Stroked his middle finger down her folds and up to her clit and down her folds.

He was slow about it. He was drawing it out. And even if he wanted to believe he didn't do this all that purposefully, that he did it _despite_ , that he was manned over by his lust and out of his mind, he couldn't, because he was drawing it out. Because he was giving them time. If he drew this out, he would give them more chances to look up. To discover them.

And because he was stupid, that was exactly what he wanted.

With a grunt, he backed his hips away from her fingers when they, at last, had drawn his cock out from his pants through the lacing. Instead, he pressed her against the balcony.

"— _the Crown Prince cannot await the day he will walk down the steps of the golden temple and lay eyes on his blessed bride—"_

She _growled_. Held up her skirt, and spread her legs.

And then she growled some more, because he didn't ram himself into her.

Instead, he stepped up to her, bent his knees to align himself with her, one hand on his cock, one hand between her shoulder blades, and with an inaudible hiss, he dipped his cock against her ever so slightly.

Her shins quivered. She moved onto her tiptoes, clawed at the broad, wide railing and arched her back.

If she dared, she would be moaning. He wanted her to be moaning.

"— _serve the kingdom as his Holiness will serve the people and restore the standing of the Earth to its rightful place and glory—"_

Biting down on his tongue to keep from moaning himself, he dragged his cock along her wet folds. She was slick and warm and her flushed skin like a plush pillow beckoning, her inner muscles flexing with every slow drag of his tip against her entrance, the quiver he felt from her whole body as he dragged his cock in the staccato beat of her breathing back down the whole length of her wetness. She backed her ass up at him, balancing on her tiptoes with her chest now flat against the wide railing so he would just push into her.

But he couldn't have that. He pulled at her dress, yanked her up a little and she whimpered ever-so softly because it had stopped the movement of his cock.

But if she was bent over completely like that, they would not see from below. They wouldn't see her.

He should have wanted that. He should be pushing her down, not up.

She whined, whimpered by the time she managed to brace her hands back up, back arched and ass bucking, and he resumed his slow strokes against her. Up, down, up down, slow and pressing.

"— _today, alas, is the most important day of your lives. Today is the day a select few of you will be chosen for holy examination. May one of you bear the fruit of—"_

He wanted to push into her. Wanted to ram into her and fuck her into the stone. He wanted her to moan so loud the high priest would flush and look up to make out the improper noise. He wanted the eyes of every person down there to follow. All those gazes that had been looking for him in the crowd, he wanted them to find him all at once as he plowed into his forbidden wife.

And yet he stalled, kept his wits. And when he hovered against her, when her entrance clenched wet and warm and deliriously needy, instead of pushing the tip into her, he orbited it around and around and around, heavy and pulsing and studiously ignoring the build-up deep inside that wanted to be stupid.

But she wanted him to be stupid, too. She was so wet it was smeared on the inside of her thighs.

It was when the crowd finally clapped, the murmur of conversation once again rising, that he let go.

Her hiss of pleasure was so pitiful it rivalled even his own when he finally allowed his cock to dip inside, felt the slick heat of her envelope him as he stretched her, moaned too loud and too relieved between his clenched teeth and tense jaw as he grabbed her hip with one hand and slowly, slowly, slowly filled her up completely.

He felt every millimeter of himself push into her fluttering insides. She clenched and spasmed around his cock, trembled and cursed when he pushed as far as he fit and then just stayed there, buried deep inside of her where he would always belong.

She squirmed. She wanted to be fucked, she told him so, but he was grabbing her milky thigh and watched his long fingers dig into the softest, pale-white skin, mesmerized. Lifted it up and away just ever so slightly to open her up a little further so he would fit just that tiny bit more, and when he so carefully pressed against her —into her— that very last bit, she almost wailed. Her elbows flew up, her hands clawing at the sandstone as she braced herself against it to press back against him, to help him in just a millimeter more, just a tiny bit closer.

The sensation made him delirious, his cock swelled and throbbed inside her and she felt it and clenched back. He shuddered a gasp and pressed his forehead into her neck.

When he did fuck her, finally, hard and off-beat, just a little later, he ripped the necklace from between her breasts. Ripped his ring from her bosom so it would dangle freely, visibly, as it clicked against the sandstone as he fucked her bent over the balcony at last, and she moaned to every last metallic clang of it even more than to his cock in her.

He fucked her so thoroughly, so attentively, watching her every reaction, his eyes glued to her form and hers glued to the crowd, thrusting harder when she moaned for it, deeper when she pressed against him for it, rolling his hips when she shuddered on it, until he was drilling her into the balcony because she wanted him to, until she was a moaning, gasping, wet mess on wobbly, trembling legs and he held her as steady as he could, holding on by a thread.

She clawed at the sandstone to keep upright, the rhythmic movement of his thrusts moving her across the railing so that her thick white-golden bodice was dragged down, her pale pink nipples so beautifully puckered and just-so free, brushing against the stone. Her breasts bounced as he thrust into her and he wrapped his arms back around her to cup the soft mounds possessively, to hide her breasts from view should anyone look, because these were only for him, for no one else ever, not in the thousand years he still thought she would live.

He didn't even need to wipe her insignia free. This time it was already out. She was in the most famous dress in the solar system in a messy disarray around her middle, his unworthy cock throbbing inside of her at Leda's Call, and the golden crescent moon on her forehead wasn't hidden whatsoever, it was out and glowing with her forbidden pleasure.

He fucked her and fucked her until his hips burned, fucked her to the clang and clatter of the mingling crowd below, clasped his hands with hers over her chest and pressed his mouth into her sweaty neck and prayed and prayed and prayed that someone would look up.

 _Anyone_.

It was risky. It was dangerous. And neither of them even pretended anymore that it was only 'deep down' that they wanted to be caught.

They desperately, desperately wanted to be caught.

But no one did, and he squeezed her hand and his thrusts became desperate, unrhythmic, and when he kissed the nape of her neck next, it was damp and smelled like her.

"Promise you'll never do it here again?" she gasped.

He stilled his hips. Stopped buried deep inside of her, bent over her.

"Never," he vowed.

"With no one else but me," she begged, turned her head. Found his eyes for the first time they'd been doing this, and they were heavy and desperate and oh-so-pretty. "This memory is mine."

"Yes," he croaked.

And then the tears burst from those pretty eyes, and he wanted them to stop. He wanted them to never exist.

"Promise I'm the only one," she cried.

He couldn't help it, his tears fell too. Fell into her face. "I promise," he hushed, and thrust into her slowly, carefully, tenderly, as if to prove a point.

She shook her head, looked back down at the crowd. The sandstone turned dark where her tears dropped onto it.

"No," she said. "Fuck me like you could make me yours."

And so he did.

He did until his stupid holy seed was dribbling down her thighs, mingled with her wetness. In clear, incriminating view and the sight was enough to make his flaccid cock come back to life and try again.

He tried. He tried so hard, so fruitlessly.

It could be so easy. There was a reason why his chastity was so protected. Their laws would protect his child. Would protect her. Would force him to marry even the enemy. It could be their out if she was anyone but her.

How could this ever have felt like a blessing? The irony that the most feared union in the entire solar system was not a danger at all for the golden kingdom's laws. This was a woman he could paint in seed, and yet the Silver Crystal would always protect her - and him, in a way. At least that's what they'd thought before. The holy seed in an unwelcoming womb.

Only later when they realised this might have been their loophole, and even before had become something he so desperately wanted, her round with his child, her to be his in the eyes of his world.

Only later they realised it was a curse.

When her legs started to shake, he slipped out of her, still hard. Dropped to his knees where his cum was smeared across her thighs and dragged his tongue into it, his hands pressed into her milky-white thighs. Pressed his mouth against her not to lap it up, but to catch it and press it back into her, every last bit back into her, his tongue as deep as it will go again and again so it _stays_ , and did it until she came again, hunched bonelessly and shuddering over the railing.

It didn't stay. When reason returned and they finally realised what they had almost done, what they had almost forced to happen, and started to regret it with a burning heart and guilty conscience, it was all smeared down her legs and his chin and it didn't ever stay.

* * *

Of all their transgressions, of all their reckless stupidity, of obvious disguises and kisses on beams of the moon palace, tête-à-têtes on the very fucking throne, and fucking her on a golden balcony overlooking the biggest event of his young life where one just had to look up to see the treason right in front their eyes, it was a seating chart and a simple kiss that had killed them in the end.

They'd been so careful, in the end. When his Shitennou all knew and her Senshi all knew and they'd gotten too close to the fire too often, and enough had happened to finally, finally, make them careful. When he barely saw her anymore, tasted her even less, because, by now, he'd finally understood what the prize would be, and so had she.

It wasn't his cum on her thighs, or his cock deep inside of her as she rode him in the throne room, that had doomed them all.

It was a Prince too angry and too loud.

After their last near-exposure, when they no longer pretend they were careful and even _Nephrite —_ who had found them flushed and in obvious disarray after that balcony— had thrown a fit, it had been months of agony where he did not see her. His own _wife_. In a time where his court decided his future completely without his say. Where Venus came in her stead to represent her for meetings once again. Meetings he had called in for the sole reason to get a glimpse of her in the first place.

Months until, _finally_ , there she was, her at her mother's side, him at his mother's side, during rounds and rounds and rounds of negotiation with the Mercurians to grant the Earth a trade treaty so they may have access to their advanced technology at last.

He didn't attempt to sneak into her quarters and she didn't attempt to sneak out. They held their gazes as neutral as they could and only spoke when appropriate.

He didn't offer to accompany her anywhere and she did not request it. He didn't direct his speech at her, only her mother, and she didn't either.

And yet, on the second day of negotiations —and so late in the day and it seemed even later than that— after glances painted in agonizing yearning that he did not know how well he managed to cover up, he found himself in a seat next to her, facing straight forward at the round table.

A half an hour more and she'd not moved a muscle in her face when he'd finally dared his hand to reach and touch her leg. Did not move a muscle in her face either, when she grabbed it underneath the table, squeezed it so hard his fingers hurt, and held on to it until they both startled and straightened and broke contact when one of the Mercurian guards had moved to stand where they might see.

A room filled with the aristocracy of three kingdoms, guards from all of them on top, and no one had seen.

And then he'd broken.

The sixth and last day of the negotiations, the final banquet. Her mother already back on the moon for more important dealings, Serenity to represent the Silver Millennium Alliance in her place. A disgrace planned on her name so unimportant in retrospect, but by his own men right under his nose. He'd waved a seating chart in Kunzite's face in rage, and broken.

It all happened only mere weeks before his coronation. He'd been too sure, too arrogant, that they could deal with what was coming, with what he was doing. He'd been so wrong.

He'd flown across the palace, loud and reckless and _done_. Caused half the palace to whisper: the Crown Prince in the Moon Princess's chambers. Flew at her like she was his oasis, and she _was_. And she reached him just as fast, sighed in such painful relief when her hands connected with his face, and he pressed his lips to hers in the briefest, chastest kiss they'd ever shared, and it had again tasted like tears, like so many of her kisses had tasted, in the end.

They hadn't even needed to wait for the whispers to become the storm. The lips of the Crown Prince Endymion of Elysion on those of Princess Serenity's, the heiress of the Silver Millennium, had barely disconnected before the consequences of his carelessness had hit.

Too many had seen.

They'd gotten what they wanted. Gotten what they should never have wanted.

The maids in the visitor's hall had called for a guard. With reinforcement, they'd pried the doors open under Jupiter's hands.

Voice reached the court, the Queen Regent, the Rebellion, like dominoes falling.

The guard's name was Amynaeschylos. He openly cried of seduction and treason. Of the holy vessel in need of protection and salvation. Of suspictions he'd had for a while. He only did his duty.

The Earth never got that trade deal. In fact, the Earth pulled out of the silver alliance only three days later, breaking his heart, breaking with it every peace negotiation accomplished between the Earth and the rest of the solar system since the long war, and he'd been powerless to prevent it, days before being the most powerful man on this planet.

It was the day he'd finally understood what exactly it was that he had risked, and had begged and confessed and revealed all his truths on his knees at his mother's feet, the rightful king before the Queen Regent. For naught.

The hate and backlash towards the Moon Kingdom that erupted in the wake of his carelessness was so full of violent rage it felt as though it was supernaturally fueled, and maybe it was. A darkest of humany's many sides that had needed but a Catalyst to justify violence and genocide, and he had provided.

His Shittenou sided with the Lady Beryl and her nationalist Rebellion one by one. First Jadeite. Last, and most painful, Kunzite. The rebellion decided to invade for revenge in his name, his mother's armies behind them, blackened hearts and broken pride and the dream of superiority their driving forces. He'd barely had the time to make it to the Moon, to warn her, and he did. But when the troops arrived only hours later, they did not make it off the castle grounds, even as he yanked her down the burning, smoking corridors himself.

He died three weeks after that kiss in the visitor's wing. He died trying to protect her from his own men's swords, trying so hard that she would live.

She didn't.

* * *

_Fin_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY, OK?!
> 
> Anyway. I hope you're all doing ok out there!
> 
> (Also, fyi, the new color version of the Japanese eternal edition manga gives us very naked Serenity and Endymion proof that they were intimate, ok? Just so you know xD I'M CANON-COMPLIANT, I AM!)
> 
> Writing me a review, please?

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is set in my Silver Millennium universe. The Harmless one. The Catalyst one. But since that is a bit scattered, I thought I'd include a little reading guide for you.
> 
> In chronological order of writing it (but not narratively), this universe includes the following fics:
> 
> Catalyst  
> Harmless (in the Little Moments Series)  
> A Kiss Goodbye (50 Kisses)  
> A Kiss In Secrecy (50 Kisses)  
> A Kiss In Grief (50 Kisses)  
> A Casual Kiss (50 Kisses)  
> A Forced Kiss (50 Kisses)  
> A Kiss Because Time Is Running Out (50 Kisses)  
> A Kiss At The End Of The World (50 Kisses)  
> A Second Kiss In Danger (50 Kisses)
> 
> You can also find this list on tumblr (under the hashtag harmless-universe) including links to all the fics and ficlets. There I also posted a tentative narrative chronological order, but it was always meant to be scattered snippets in time!
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much to two people especially! Antigone2 for cheering me on and motivating me throughout the writing of this fic - I was REALLY frustrated with it for a while there and your enthusiasm about it helped keep me motivated like nothing else! And Uglygreenjacket for being my trooper always, even when the world is burning all around us! Thank you!
> 
> I hope you're all doing ok and offer this little tragic escapism!
> 
> So yeah, this fic has three parts, and I hope you enjoy it, I'm sorry for all the angst but this is SilMil, and reviews are love and keep me going!


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